Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T17:15:28.769Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonological selectivity in the acquisition of English clusters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2019

Itamar SHATZ Open the ORCID record for Itamar SHATZ [Opens in a new window]
Itamar SHATZ*
Affiliation:
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Cambridge University
*
9 West Road, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Phonological selectivity is a phenomenon where children preselect which target words they attempt to produce. The present study examines selectivity in the acquisition of complex onsets and codas in English, and specifically in the acquisition of biconsonantal (CC) clusters in each position compared to triconsonantal (CCC) clusters. The data come from the naturalistic productions of three English-speaking children. The results indicate that children only attempt to produce target tokens with a CCC onset after they have successfully produced target tokens with a CC onset, and that the same occurs in the case of codas. Frequency, morphological complexity, sonority, and /s/ clusters were examined and ruled out as possible explanations of these acquisition patterns. Overall, this suggests that children are selective in their target words, and only attempt to produce words that contain a cluster after they have produced words containing a shorter cluster of the same type (i.e., onset/coda).

Keywords

phonological selectivityavoidancenative language acquisitionEnglish clustersError Selective Learning
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 1025 - 1057
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, G., & Bat-El, O. (2009). When do universal preferences emerge in language development? The acquisition of Hebrew stress. Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 1, 255–82.Google Scholar
Ambridge, B., Kidd, E., Rowland, C. F., & Theakston, A. L. (2015). The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 42, 239–73.Google Scholar
Barlow, J. A. (2001). The structure of /s/-sequences: evidence from a disordered system. Journal of Child Language, 28, 291–324.Google Scholar
Bat-El, O. (2012). The Sonority Dispersion Principle in the acquisition of Hebrew word-final codas. In Parker, S. (Ed.), The sonority controversy (pp. 319–44). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Becker, M. (2012). Target selection in Error Selective Learning. Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 4, 120–39.Google Scholar
Becker, M., & Tessier, A.-M. (2011). Trajectories of faithfulness in child-specific phonology. Phonology, 28, 163–96.Google Scholar
Borowsky, T. J. (1989). Structure preservation and the syllable coda in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 7, 145–66.Google Scholar
Braginsky, M., Yurovsky, D., Marchman, V. A., & Frank, M. C. (2016). From uh-oh to tomorrow: predicting age of acquisition for early words across languages. In Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman, D., & Trueswell, J. C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1691–1696). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Online <https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2016/index.html>..>Google Scholar
Brown, T. (2012). The role of syllable structure in the acquisition of American English by three native Amharic speakers. Linguistic Portfolios, 1, 1–18.Google Scholar
Clements, G. N. (1992). The sonority cycle and syllable organization. In Dressler, W. U., Luschützky, H. C., Pfeiffer, O. E., & Rennison, J. R. (Eds.), Phonologica 1988: proceedings of the 6th International Phonology Meeting (pp. 63–76). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clements, G. N., & Keyser, S. J. (1983). Cv phonology: a generative theory of the syllable. Cambridge, MA: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, MIT Press.Google Scholar
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. (2014). Version 0.7b. Carnegie Mellon University. Available at <http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict> .+.>Google Scholar
Cohen, E.-G. (2012). Vowel harmony and universality in Hebrew acquisition. Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 4, 7–29.Google Scholar
Cohen, E.-G. (2015). Phoneme complexity and frequency in the acquisition of Hebrew rhotics. Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development, 3, 1–11.Google Scholar
Compton, A. J., & Streeter, M. (1977). Child phonology: data collection and preliminary analyses (Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 13). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Dobrich, W., & Scarborough, H. (1992). Phonological characteristics of words young children say. Journal of Child Language, 19, 597–616.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A., & Farwell, C. B. (1975). Words and sounds in early language acquisition. Language, 51, 419–39.Google Scholar
Fletcher, P., Chan, C., Wong, P., Stokes, S., Tardif, T., & Leung, S. (2004). The interface between phonetic and lexical abilities in early Cantonese language development. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 18, 535–45.Google Scholar
Gafni, C. (2015). Child Phonology Analyzer: processing and analyzing transcribed speech. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1–5). University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Gafni, C. (2019). Child Phonology Analyzer [computer program]. Retrieved from <https://chengafni.wordpress.com/cpa>..>Google Scholar
Gierut, J. A., & Dale, R. A. (2007). Comparability of lexical corpora: word frequency in phonological generalization. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 21, 423–33.Google Scholar
Gnanadesikan, A. (2004). Markedness and faithfulness constraints in child phonology. In Kager, R., Pater, J., & Zonneveld, W. (Eds.), Constraints in phonological acquisition (pp. 73–108). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goad, H., & Rose, Y. (2004). Acquisition of left-edge clusters in West Germanic. In Kager, R., Pater, J., & Zonneveld, W. (Eds.), Constraints in phonological acquisition (pp. 109–57). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goad, H., & Shimada, A. (2014). /s/ can be a vocoid. In Iyer, J. & Kusmer, L. (Eds.), NELS 44: Proceedings of the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (pp. 135–48). Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. (1985). Level-ordering in lexical development. Cognition, 21, 73–93.Google Scholar
Gregová, R. (2006). The generative and the structuralist approach to the syllable: a comparative analysis of English and Slovak. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Gregová, R. (2010). A comparative analysis of consonant clusters in English and in Slovak. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, 3, 79–84.Google Scholar
Hall, T. A. (2002). Against extrasyllabic consonants in German and English. Phonology, 19, 33–75.Google Scholar
Ito, J. (1986). Syllable theory in prosodic phonology (Doctoral dissertation). University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Retrieved from <https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8701171>..>Google Scholar
Kay-Raining, E., & Robin, S. (1998). Partial representations and phonological selectivity in the comprehension of 13- to 16-month-olds. First Language, 18, 105–27.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P., & Menn, L. (1977). On the acquisition of phonology. In Macnamara, J. (Ed.), Language learning and thought (pp. 47–78). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kirk, C., & Demuth, K. (2003). Onset/Coda asymmetries in the acquisition of clusters. In Beachley, B., Brown, A., & Conlin, F. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Online <http://www.cascadilla.com/bucld27toc.html>..>Google Scholar
Kuperman, V., Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., & Brysbaert, M. (2012). Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30,000 English words. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 978–90.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Schwartz, R. G., Chapman, K., Rowan, L. E., Prelock, P. A., Terrell, B., … & Messick, C. (1982). Early lexical acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 25, 554–64.Google Scholar
Levelt, C. C., Schiller, N. O., & Levelt, W. J. (2000). The acquisition of syllable types. Language Acquisition, 8, 237–64.Google Scholar
Li, P., & Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lieven, E. (2010). Input and first language acquisition: evaluating the role of frequency. Lingua, 120, 2546–56.Google Scholar
Luce, P. A., & Pisoni, D. B. (1998). Recognizing spoken words: the neighborhood activation model. Ear and Hearing, 19, 1–36.Google Scholar
Macken, M., & Ferguson, C. A. (1983). Cognitive aspects of phonological development: model, evidence, and issue. In Nelson, K. (Ed.), Children's language (pp. 256–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
McLeod, S., Doorn, J. Van, & Reed, V. A. (2001). Normal acquisition of consonant clusters. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 10, 99–110.Google Scholar
Mel’čuk, I. (2006). Explanatory combinatorial dictionary. In Sica, G. (Ed.), Open problems in linguistics and lexicography (pp. 225–355). Monza: Polimetrica.Google Scholar
Mel’čuk, I. (2013). Semantics: from meaning to text. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ota, M., & Green, S. J. (2013). Input frequency and lexical variability in phonological development: a survival analysis of word-initial cluster production. Journal of Child Language, 40, 539–66.Google Scholar
Oz, H. (2014). Morphological awareness and some implications for English language teaching. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 136, 98–103.Google Scholar
Pater, J. (1997). Minimal violation and phonological development. Language Acquisition, 6, 201–53.Google Scholar
Redford, M. A., & Miikkulainen, R. (2007). Effects of acquisition rate on emergent structure in phonological development. Language, 83, 737–69.Google Scholar
Schwartz, R. G. (1988). Phonological factors in early lexical acquisition. In Smith, M. D. & Locke, J. L. (Eds.), The emergent lexicon: the child's development of a linguistic vocabulary (Developmental Psychology Series) (pp. 185–222). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Shibimoto, J. S., & Olmsted, D. L. (1978). Lexical and syllabic patterns in phonological acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 5, 417–46.Google Scholar
Smit, A. B., Hand, L., Freilinger, J. J., Bernthal, J. E., & Bird, A. (1991). The Iowa Articulation Norms Project and its Nebraska replication. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 34, 779–98.Google Scholar
Sosa, A. V., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (2012). Lexical and phonological effects in early word production. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 596–608.Google Scholar
Steriade, D. (1982). Greek prosidies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Storkel, H. L. (2004). Do children acquire dense neighborhoods? An investigation of similarity neighborhoods in lexical acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 201–21.Google Scholar
Sundara, M., Demuth, K., & Kuhl, P. K. (2011). Sentence-position effects on children's perception and production of English third person singular –s. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 55–71.Google Scholar
Tessier, A.-M. (2006). Stages of phonological acquisition and error-selective learning. In Baumer, D., Montero, D., & Scanlon, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL25 (pp. 408–16). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Tessier, A.-M. (2009). Frequency of violation and constraint-based phonological learning. Lingua, 119, 6–38.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., Depaolis, R. A., & Keren-Portnoy, T. (2014). The role of production in infant word learning. Language Learning, 64, 121–40.Google Scholar
Wickham, H. (2009). ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Yavaş, M. (1995). Phonological selectivity in the first fifty words of a bilingual child. Language and Speech, 38, 189–202.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Shatz supplementary material

Shatz supplementary material 1

Download Shatz supplementary material(File)
File 283.9 KB
Supplementary material: File

Shatz supplementary material

Shatz supplementary material 2

Download Shatz supplementary material(File)
File 17.1 KB