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J's rhymes: a longitudinal case study of language play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2003

SHARON INKELAS
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

A longitudinal study of one child aged 2;5 documents an invented language game consisting of suffixal reduplication and onset replacement. Initially, reduplication is partial: the reduplicant enlarges in discrete increments over the five stages of the game until by the last stage reduplication is total. Reduplication is accompanied by a process of onset replacement, in which the reduplicant always begins with /b/. Early in the game, this replacive onset ‘dissimilates’ to /p/ whenever the reduplicant would independently have begun with /b/. In subsequent stages, other voiced obstruents trigger dissimilation as well. Though similar in many ways to adult language reduplication, it is argued that J's game may more closely resemble adult rhyme (both poetic and word rhyme). Regardless, the structure of the game clearly reveals the child's awareness, in the third year of life, of stress and metrical feet, segmental natural classes, and segments themselves (phonemic awareness).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Trilateral Phonology Weekend at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2000 and at the University of California, Davis in 2001. I am grateful to those audiences for useful feedback, to Orhan Orgun for his participation in all phases of this study, and to Kristin Hanson and Yvan Rose for their detailed and influential comments on an earlier version of the paper. My most profound thanks go to J for proving once again that toddlers are the real linguists.