Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:45:04.511Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The influence of dialectal variation on phonological acquisition: a case study on the acquisition of Cantonese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Sou-Mee Tse
Affiliation:
Mount Sinai Hospital Research Institute, Toronto
David Ingram*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
*
Department of Linguistics, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver B.C. V6T 1W5, Canada.

Abstract

The phonological acquisition of a young girl whose parents spoke two dialects of Cantonese was examined. The father's dialect had a phonological distinction between initial /l/ and /n/ which was merged into /l/ in the mother's dialect. The child was followed bi-weekly for approximately one year. The results indicate that she acquired neither the mother's nor the father's dialect. Instead, she acquired [l] and [n] as freely varying allophones of a single phoneme. In the first months, [n] was the most frequent realization of the phoneme, with [l] becoming the most frequent one in later sessions. The results are interpreted as supporting the claim that children use all available input in acquiring language rather than limiting themselves to a primary language model.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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

Chao, Y. R. (1947) Cantonese primer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheung, Y. S. (1972) Cantonese as spoken in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Hashimoto, O. A. (1972) Studies in Yu dialects 1: phonology or Cantonese. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1981) Procedures for the phonological analysis of children's language. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1981/1982) The emerging phonological system of an Italian-English bilingual child. Journal of Italian Linguistics 2. 95113.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1985) [v]: the acquisition. Paper presented to the Western Conference on Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada.Google Scholar
Jeng, H. (1979) The acquisition of Chinese phonology in relation to Jakobson's laws of irreversible solidarity. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2. 151–61.Google Scholar
Pye, C., Ingram, D. & List, H. (in press) A comparison of initial consonant acquisition in English and Quiche. In K. E. Nelson & A. van Kleeck (eds), Children's language. Vol. 6.Google Scholar
Ronjat, J. (1913) Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue. Paris.Google Scholar
Scollon, R. (1974) One child's language from one to two: the origin of constructions. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar
Tse, S-M. (1982) The acquisition of Cantonese phonology. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, TheUniversity of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Velten, H. (1943) The growth of phonemic and lexical patterns in infant speech. Language 19. 281–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, I. (1975) One system or two: An analysis of a two-year-old Romanian-English bilingual's phonology. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 9. 4362.Google Scholar
Volterra, V. & Taeschner, T. (1978) The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language 5. 311–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, R. (1962) Language in the crib. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Wong, S. L. (1940) Yue-yin yun-hui. (A Chinese syllabary pronounced according to the dialect of Canton.) Hong Kong: Zhong Hua Shuju.Google Scholar