Acquisition of Phonetics
and Phonology
Presenters:
Silvia Becker (LN Hauptstudium)
Alice Mazurek (TN Hauptstudium)
Contents
Introduction
 Infant Speech Perception
 Production
 Early Speech Production
 Morphology

Introduction
Phonetics: study of the characteristics
of speech sounds
 Phonology: description of the system
and patterns of speech sounds; mental
aspect of the sounds in a language
 Morphology: study of forms; analyzes
basic elements of language

Infant Speech Perception
Experimental paradigms for testing
infants
 Categorical perception of infants
 Other speech perception abilities of
infants
 Changes in perception over the course
of the first year of life

General Information on Infant
Speech Perception
Rich field of study
 Ability of infants to recognize
differences in speakers when relevant
and to ignore it, when not relevant
 Ability to differenciate utterances of the
infant‘s native language from those of
foreign languages

Infant Speech Perception
Fundamental problem: determining
what constitutes a sound in the target
language
 First step: perceiving destinctions
between sounds and perceiving speech
as phonetic categories

Experimental Paradigms for Testing
Infants

Four experimental paradigms:
1) Measuring heart rate
2) Measuring sucking rate
3) Visual Fixation Procedure
4) The Head Turn Preference
Procedure
Categorical Perception of Infants
Young infants perceive consonants
categorically
 Voiced Onset Time (VOT)
- prevoiced
- voiced or voiceless unaspirated
- voiceless (aspirated)

Other Speech Perception Abilities of
Infants
From birth infants are sensitive to many
phonetic distinctions
 Vowel distinction

Changes in Perception over the
Course of the First Year of Life
• Distinguish contrasts which are nonphonemic in the target language 
distinguish only phonemic distinctions in
the target language
• Lose their perceptual abilities for nonnative sounds as their babbling begins
to take on characteristics of the input
language
Language and the Mind
Prof. R. Hickey
SS 2006
Acquisition of phonology
Schmidt, Anke
(Grundstudium LN)
Schmidt, Sarah
(Hauptstudium LN)
Overview
1. Production of sounds
• Babbling
2. Early speech production
• Building a system of contrasts
• Phonological processes
• The importance of the stressed syllable
3. Summary
4. References
Production of sounds
Babbling
sounds constrained by anatomy of vocal
tract
 configured for vegetative requirements:
sucking, breathing, burping, crying
 larynx higher
 shorter pharyngeal cavity
 tongue relatively big

Production of sounds

Babbling
2-4 months:
– begin to coo, laugh
– no speech sounds produced
Production of sounds

Babbling
4-5 months:
–
–
–
–
–
vocal tract reconfigures
begin to babble
speech- like sounds
stimulated by speech of others
babbling lacks spectral, temporal characteristics
Production of sounds

Babbling
6-7 months:
–
–
–
–
“canonical babbling”
consonant & vowel sounds
characteristics of “real” cv
often reduplicated
– e.g. bababa or gaga
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:
1.
Minimal consonant inventory
Labial
Nonlabial
p
t
k
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:
2.
Embodiment of additional features
Labial
Coronal
Dorsal
p
t
k
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:
3.
Voicing becomes a contrastive feature
Labial
Coronal
Dorsal
Voiceless
p
t
k
Voiced
b
d
g
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:
4. May
then incorporate nasality
Labial
p
b
m
Coronal
t
d
n
Dorsal
k
g
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Sonorant constraining contrasts:
Sonorant
Nonsonorant
m, n, l
p, s, d
 relationship between adult´s and child´s pronunciation:
Target sound
Child´s sound
p
n
p, s, d
m, n, l
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

Additional contrasts to sonorants
+coronal/coronal
d, t, s, n, l vs. p,
m, k
+voice/-voice
d, m, n, l vs. p,
s, t, k
+sonorant/sonorant
m, n, l vs. p, t, d,
s, k
Speech production
Building a system of contrasts

 more
familiar
phonetic
feature matrix
sound
sonorant coronal
voice
p
-
-
-
t
-
+
-
d
-
+
+
k
-
-
-
m
+
-
+
n, l
+
+
+
s
-
+
-
Speech production
Phonological processes

Substitution processes
1.
Stopping
– fricatives [ f, v, 2, 3, s, z, $, g ] replaced with
stop consonant [ p, b, t, d, k, g ]
– <sea> [ ti:]
– <sing> [ tin ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Substitution processes
2.
Fronting
– velar [ k, g, n ], palatal sounds [ c ] replaced with
alveolar consonants [ t, d, n, l, s, z ]
– <goose> [ du:s ]
– <goat> [ dut ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Substitution processes
3.
Gliding
– glide [ w, j ] substituted for liquid sound
[ l, r ]
– <ready> [ wedi ]
– <lap> [ j@p ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Substitution processes
4.
Vocalization
Vowel neutralization
5.
Speech production
Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes
1.
Voicing
– two separate processes:
– consonants tend to be voiced when preceding a
vowel
– devoiced at the end of a syllable
– <paper> [ beibq ]
– <bed> [ bet ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes
2.
Consonant harmony
– in C1VC2 contexts, consonants tend to
assimilate to each other
– three frequent patterns
Speech production
Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes
2.
Consonant harmony
i.
–
velar assimilation
apical consonants tend to assimilate to a
neighbouring velar consonant
–
–
<duck> [ gvk ]
<tongue> [ gvn ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes
2.
Consonant harmony
ii. labial assimilation
– apical consonants tend to assimilate to a
neighbouring labial consonant
–
–
<tub> [ bvb ]
<steps> [ beps ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes
3.
Progressive vowel assimilation
– unstressed vowel assimilates to a
preceding stressed vowel
– <flower> [ /fá:wa ]
– <hammer> [ /ha:ma ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes
– Specific phonological processes
– To simplify syllable structure
– Towards a basic CV syllable
Speech production
Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes
1.
Cluster reduction
– consonant cluster is reduced to single consonant
– <dress> [ des ]
– <clown> [ kaun ]
– German: (to write) <schreiben> [ saibqn ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes
2.
Deletion of final consonants
– CVC consonant is reduced to CV
– <bike> [ bai ]
– <more> [ mv ]
Speech production
Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes
3.
Deletion of unstressed syllables
Reduplication
4.
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable

children know there are words
 don’t know structure
 problem: speech signal is continuous
 initially no lexicon

Must apply system for segmenting signal into
words
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable
“metrical segmentation strategy”
 structure characterizes language

– explicit segmentation

understanding word boundaries
 English template:
– first syllable of content word is stressed

major role in defining boundaries
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable

bi- syllabic words:

reduce target to single syllable:
– stressed syllable

when second syllable stressed:
– preservation of first segment of word, not syllable

more than stressed syllable is represented in
lexical entries
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable
target
child’s pronunciation
balloon
[bu]
[bun]
[bum]
[bu:n]
guitar
[tar]
[ga]
[ga:r]
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable

polysyllabic words

hypothesis:
 bias for final syllables
– e.g. tri-syllabic

final rime preserved
 second syllable stressed
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable
target
child’s pronunciation
remember
[memq]
[membq]
another
[nv3Q]
[nvdQ]
[nv2Q]
[nv:Q]
Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable

first syllable stressed:
final rime target = final rime child
 stressed syllable target= stressed
syllable child

Speech production
The importance of the stressed syllable
target
child’s pronunciation
elephant
[/efent]
[/efvnt]
[/e:fint]
[/e:fvnt]
medicine
[/mesin]
[/me:sin]
Summary


Production of sounds
– Babbling: first imitation of consonants and vowels
Early speech production
– Building a system of contrasts: important to
distinguish between sounds and therefore words, it
shows how the child learns to place sounds into
categories
– Phonological processes: the children undergo
several processes in order to acquire the huge
variety of the language's phonology
– The importance of the stressed syllable: children
use stress to locate word boundaries
References




Bußmann, Hadumod. 2002. Lexikon der
Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Alfred
Kröner Verlag.
Dretzke, Burkhard (1998). Modern British and
American English Pronunciation. A Basic Textbook.
Paderborn u.a.: Schöningh
Fletcher, Paul and Michael Garman (eds) (1989)
Language acquisition. Studies in first language
development. 2nd edition. (Cambridge: University
Press).
A. Fromkin et al. (2000). Linguistics. An Introduction
to Linguistic Theory. Massachussets: Oxford
University Press.
Thank you for your attention!
The Acquisition of English
Morphology
Martina Kleinebreil (TN) Grundstudium
Adam von Wald (TN) Grundstudium
Definition:
Morphology is concerned with the study
of word forms or the internal structure of
words and the process of word
formation.
A morpheme is the smallest unit which
carries meaning.
e.g. talk  talk-ing  talk-s  talk-ed
Morphemes can be divided into free and
bound morphemes.
- Free morphemes
(nouns, verbs, ...)
can stand on their own.
- Bound morphemes cannot stand on their
own.
All affixes in English are bound morphemes:
prefixes are added to the beginning of the
stem: re-build
suffixes are added to the end of a stem: builder
Bound morphemes can be further divided
into:
inflectional morphemes
and
derivational morphemes
Inflectional morphemes show the grammatical
function of a word, e.g. whether a word is
singular or plural, past tense, ...
Derivational morphemes are used to build
new words.
So derivational morphemes are prefixes and
suffixes.
(re-, ex-, -less, -ly)
Learning Morphological Rules
The Linguistic Rule:
“Since normal language use is at least to some extent
‘motivated‘, ‘free‘ or ‘creative‘, it is obvious that
language acqusition must not be limited to the mere
imitation or rote learning of forms and their
associated meanings, but must also involve the
extraction or abstraction of a certain quantity of
general pricipals or rules.“ (Baker and Derwing)
Learning Morphological Rules
Some rule learning takes place in language
acqusition, but how do we exploit or test this
process?
“A regular anthology [i.e. rule] permits a speaker
to utter speech-forms which he has not heard...“
(Bloomfield)
Observation through testing, e.g. Testing
morphological rule knowledge and progression
with new words (for the speaker)
The Berko study
(1958)
-test for rule knowledge with pre-school and
first grade children
- use of nonsense stems
Result:
- some kind of morphological rule learning
takes place
- quite a number of mophological rules have
been acquired by the age of 5 years or even
earlier
Problems:
- The study was too restricted in conception
and scope
two key questions are left:
-What particular rules might have been
learned?
- How does such rule-knowledge develop over
time?
Progression of Development
Innes (1974)
Better sample – 120 boys and girls 2-8 years old
Remarkable agreement with Berko, plus a new developmental aspect
Progress order –
1. No knowledge of a pluralization rule
2. Mastery of all but the fricative stems
3. Mastery of all but the sibilant fricative stems {s, z, etc.}
4. Mastery of all but the {z} stems
5. Mastery of all the stems
Progession of Development
Drewing - Baker (1976)
Derivational progress:
Construction
Preschool
Early
Middle
Late
Adult
Agent
7
63
80
86
96
Instrument
7
35
45
64
59
Adjective
0
30
55
86
100
Adverb
0
13
20
79
81
Progression of Development
There are many morphological rules
So....
There must be many different tests
Progress is slow in this field
Sources:




Bußmann, Hadumod. 2002. Lexikon der
Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Alfred
Kröner Verlag.
Dretzke, Burkhard (1998). Modern British and
American English Pronunciation. A Basic Textbook.
Paderborn u.a.: Schöningh
Fletcher, Paul and Michael Garman (eds) (1989)
Language acquisition. Studies in first language
development. 2nd edition. (Cambridge: University
Press).
A. Fromkin et al. (2000). Linguistics. An Introduction
to Linguistic Theory. Massachussets: Oxford
University Press.