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Phonotactics and morphophonology in early child language: Evidence from Dutch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2011

TANIA S. ZAMUNER ,
ANNEMARIE KERKHOFF  and
PAULA FIKKERT
TANIA S. ZAMUNER*
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
ANNEMARIE KERKHOFF
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
PAULA FIKKERT
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Tania S. Zamuner, Department of Linguistics, Arts Hall, Room 401, University of Ottawa, 70 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This research investigates children's knowledge of how surface pronunciations of lexical items vary according to their phonological and morphological context. Dutch-learning children aged 2.5 and 3.5 years were tested on voicing neutralization and morphophonological alternations. For instance, voicing does not alternate between the pair [pɛt]~[pɛtən] (cap~caps) but does in [bɛt]~[bɛdən] (bed~beds). Data from the first experiment showed that children at a younger age were less accurate at imitating words with /d/ than /t/, regardless of morphological context. In a second study, children between 2 and 4 years were asked to produce singulars from novel plurals (e.g., [kɛtən]~[kɛt] and [kɛdən]~[kɛt]). Results indicated that children's performance was better in contexts that did not require surface variation. Dutch-learning children are not able to robustly generalize their knowledge of phonotactics and morphophonological alternations. Rather, it appears that their knowledge is more concrete, in line with recent usage-based theories of acquisition.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 481 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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