Patterns of intra-word phonological variability during the second year of life (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Child Language, 2012
ABSTRACTAlthough it has been often hypothesized that children learn to produce new sound patterns first in frequently heard words, the available evidence in support of this claim is inconclusive. To re-examine this question, we conducted a survival analysis of word-initial consonant clusters produced by three children in the Providence Corpus (0 ; 11–4 ; 0). The analysis took account of several lexical factors in addition to lexical input frequency, including the age of first production, production frequency, neighborhood density and number of phonemes. The results showed that lexical input frequency was a significant predictor of the age at which the accuracy level of cluster production in each word first reached 80%. The magnitude of the frequency effect differed across cluster types. Our findings indicate that some of the between-word variance found in the development of sound production can indeed be attributed to the frequency of words in the child's ambient language.
Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children*
Journal of Child Language, 2010
ABSTRACTOur understanding of the relationships between lexical and phonological development has been enhanced in recent years by increased interest in this area from language scientists, psychologists and phonologists. This review article provides a summary of research, highlighting similarities and differences across studies. It is suggested that the research falls into two categories with different goals and different methodological approaches: (1) child-centered studies that examine the influences active in the prelinguistic and early-word period, emphasizing individual developmental patterns and the active role played by the child; and (2) studies inspired by research on word processing in adults; these focus on the effects of the phonological and lexical characteristics of the ambient language on underlying representations and word learning in children. The article concludes with suggestions for integrating the findings from the two approaches and for future research.
Lexical and Phonological Effects in Early Word Production
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2012
Purpose This study examines the influence of word frequency, phonological neighborhood density (PND), age of acquisition (AoA), and phonotactic probability on production variability and accuracy of known words by toddlers with no history of speech, hearing, or language disorders. Method Fifteen toddlers between 2;0 (years;months) and 2;5 produced monosyllabic target words varying in word frequency, PND, AoA, and phonotactic probability. Phonetic transcription was used to determine (a) whole-word variability and (b) proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP; Ingram, 2002) of each target word produced. Results Results show a significant effect of PND on PWP and variability (words from dense neighborhoods had higher PWP and lower variability than those from sparse neighborhoods), a significant effect of word frequency on variability (high-frequency words were less variable) but not proximity, and a significant effect of AoA on proximity (earlier acquired words had lower PWP) but not vari...
Individual differences in phonological development: ages one and three years
Journal of speech and hearing research, 1987
This paper reports the results of a study of the persistence of individual differences in the phonological development of 10 normally developing children observed at age 1 year and again at age 3 years. Data were based on 1/2-hr audio and video recordings of weekly spontaneous mother-child interaction sessions in the home between 9 and 17 months and at 36 months. In addition, phonological and cognitive probes were administered at age 3. At age 1 the children were compared at four times selected on the basis of the number of different word types used in a session. Preferences for particular phonological categories (fricatives, liquids, final consonants) were found not to correspond to relative mastery of those categories at age 3. Based on both babble and words, high use of vocalizations containing true consonants was found to be predictive of greater phonological advance at age 3. Phonological errors of two kinds were distinguished for age 3: those resulting from difficulty with spe...
From first words to segments: A case study in phonological development
The emergence and later fading of two phonological templates - a 'palatal' template and consonant harmony - are investigated in the first 500 words produced by a child acquiring Estonian and English. Throughout the period the child's use of palatal forms, in particular, considerably exceeds their frequency in Estonian, the child's dominant language. Regression in accuracy is also traced, both overall and in individual word forms. Changes in frequency of use of the template patterns are related to growth in the size of the lexicon, the consonant inventory, and the length in syllables of words attempted. Articulatory difficulty is found to play at best a minor role in motivating pattern use, which is ascribed instead to the challenges of planning and recall.
Features in child phonology: inherent, emergent, or artefacts of analysis?
The emergence of features plays a key role in any theory of phonological development that does not assume that they are innately available before the onset of speech. After reviewing Jakobson's claims for universal orders of emergence, we consider possible criteria for feature or segment acquisition, and then discuss data from nearly 50 children (10 languages including Estonian, Finnish, Japanese, and Welsh as well as several Germanic and Romance languages). Small early vocabularies and phonetic variability make minimal pairs rare in most children. While a few children show clear evidence of utilizing features or segments, others show none, and most fall between these extremes. Gradually increasing evidence of segmental structure and systematicity reflects the slow transition to a more orderly phonology. These data support an emergentist model of feature acquisition that has many possible routes to (re-)creating phonological organization within the individual child's mind.
DIVERSITY AND CONTRASTIVITY IN PROSODIC AND SYLLABIC DEVELOPMENT
2007
The development of prosodic capabilities in infants has been studied extensively. Yet generalizations about particular capabilities emerging across the first year of life are surprisingly hard to tie down. Results have often been contradictory, in part because approaches to the study have been divergent. A traditional approach with an innatist bias has sought to demonstrate very early mastery of adult-like speech characteristics of the prosodic system. More recently, research has sought to illustrate that infants actively build a phonological system, including both prosodic and syllabic features. In our approach, adult-like features of speech are not expected to emerge fully formed early in life, but to unfold in infrastructural stages. This unfolding suggests that infant vocal categories evolve toward adult-like, language-specific features. Here, we preview a longitudinal project on infant vocal development, and argue that two widely-studied prosodic phenomena (final-syllable lengthening and pitch control) show complexities that require recognition of the infant's active participation in development of prosody. This exploratory participation leads to nuances that contradict simplistic generalizations about early emergence of adult-like prosodic structures.
The Development of Prosodic Structure: Evidence from Typical Longitudinal Data
Brill's annual of afroasiatic languages and linguistics, 2012
Te paper provides an analysis of the acquisition of prosodic structure, including prosodic words (number of syllables), feet, syllables and sub-syllabic units (i.e. nucleus, onset and coda). Te analysis, couched within the theory of prosodic phonology (Selkirk 1984, Nespor and Vogel 1986), accounts for the developmental path of each prosodic unit as well as developmental interactions among the units. Particular attention is devoted to the markedness of the prosodic units and the relationship between unmarked prosodic structures (e.g. CV syllables, trochaic feet) and early development of these structures. Te data are drawn from a longitudinal study of the early speech of 10 monolingual Hebrew-acquiring children from the age of 1;2 years till 2;10 (Ben-David 2001), the age when all prosodic units considered in the study were produced correctly. Te analysis revealed two main findings. (i) Although children's productions usually progress from the unmarked to the more marked structures during the course of development, the role of universal markedness is not always recognized. (ii) Children "build" their words from right to lef. Since the majority of words in Hebrew have final or penultimate stress, both stressed and final syllables are located at the end of the word and are rarely omitted. However, while the final syllable is not subject to prosodic changes (except for coda deletion at the beginning of the developmental process), the penultimate syllable is. Even in Strong-Weak (SW) words, which occur very early in the child's productions, cases of initial consonant deletion and harmony of the nuclei and the onset of the first syllable can be detected.