Lecture 3. Phonological development in children.
1. Early vocalisations. Perception & production.
5 periods of vocal production acc. to Stark, R.E. 1979. Prespeech segmental feature
development. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (Eds.) Language acquisition. Cambridge
Univ. Press. :
1. 0 to 8 weeks - reflexive crying and vegetative sounds (burping, swallowing,
sneezing)
2. 8-20 weeks -Cooing and laughter. (Responsiveness).
3. 16-30 weeks -Vocal play (isolation of primitive segment types). (Imitation of turntaking by caregivers)
4. 25 to 50 weeks Reduplicated babbling ( CA syllables, gestures for communication).
5. 9-18 months - non-reduplicated babbling and expressive jargon. + (First words.)
Elliot, A. J. 1996 (9). Child language. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge
Univ. Press.
As shown by Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens and Lindblom (1992) children at the
age of 6 mths can detect the distinctions between the phonemes that do not exist in
their own language, later on they start to distinguish only the speech sounds that are
relevant for their native language. (High amplitude sucking, heart rate & head
turning). The same is proclaimed to be true for the phonological production by R.
Jakobson.
2. Acquisition data in the framework of "adult phonological theories"
R.O. Jakobson (1896-1982). Child language & phonological theories.
1920 - Prague
6.10.1926 Cèrcle Linguistique de Prague (Phonology, Functional linguistics).
1939 - Copenhagen, Sweden
1941 - New York
1949-1967 -Harvard, MIT.
Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941)
Child language, Aphasia and phonological universals (1972(2)) Mouton, The HagueParis.
Zvukovye zakony detskogo jazyka i ix mesto v obshchej phonologii. (M.,1985)
Principle of least effort?? is doubtful.
Phonological richness of babbling (astonishing diversity of sound production
coinciding with the earliest stage of sound perception)-->> minimal phonemic system
(most opposed vowels : unstressed vowel system of Russian; unmarked before
marked : labials >>dental stops >> fricatives frequent sounds >> rare sounds).
Reverse order in the dissolution of the phonological system.
Criticism is aimed to show that children' phonology differs greatly from the adult one.
Innate --learned
Continuity hypothesis.
Common statements from different theories:
2.1. Children's words differ systematically from the adult words generally being more
simple (in the set of phonemes, syllabic structure etc.) Substitutions, simplification of
clusters, deletion of consonants & syllabic elision. Scheme by Peters. Syllabic ==
phonemic children.
2.2. Children's production changes from the limited segmental inventories and
syllable/word structure, and normally they achieve the adult system by the age of 6.
2.3.Variability is observed both between children and within children.
2.4. Children perceive words more accurately than they produce them.
2.5. Phonological development has many similarities with lexical, or morphological
development.
3. Linguistic typology and the relevance of different phonological
measures.
3.1. Prosodic characteristics (pitch - accent languages, like Japanese; duration Finnish (mora), vowel reduction in Russian; intensity , rhythmic / arrhythmic; foot minimal group of syllables that contains a single prosodic contrast).
3.2. Morphosyntactic chunks : tendency to an open syllable.
Nash adres ne dom i ne ulica
[na sha dri sni do my ni u li ca]
vo pole berjoza stojala == v Opele berjoza stojala.
un arbre, les arbres, l’arbre, aux arbres.
3.3. Number of morphemes per word.
Synthesis, fusion.
4. Protomorphemes and fillers.
References.
Peters, Ann. 1997. Language typology, Prosody, and the Acquisition of Grammatical
Morphemes. CLSLA V.5, pp.136/197.
Peters, Ann. 1983. The units of language acquisition. (Monographs in Applied
Psycholinguistics.) NY: Cambridge, Univ. Press.
Peters, Ann & Menn. 1993. L. False starts and filler syllables: Ways to learn
grammatical morphemes. Language, 69, 742-777.
Dressler W. U. (Ed.) 1997. Studies in pre- and protomorphology. Veröffentlichungen
der Kommission für Linguistik und Kommunikationsforschung N 26. Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wien, 1997. pp. 37-45
Bernhardt, B.H., Stemberger, J.P. 1998. Handbook of phonological development .
From the Perspective of Constraint-Based Nonlinear Phonology. Academic Press.