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Vowel dominance in overregularizations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Joseph Paul Stemberger
Joseph Paul Stemberger*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Communication Disorders, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

When children produce regularizations like comed, not all verbs are equally likely to be regularized. Several variables (e.g. lexical frequency) have been shown to be relevant, but not all the variability between verbs is understood. It is argued here that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form. Using a notion of recessive vs. dominant vowel (where recessive vowels are more likely to be replaced by dominant vowels than vice versa) based on adult phonological processing, it is predicted that regularizations should be likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. Data from 17 children reported in the literature, aged 1;6–5;6, show that this prediction is correct. Implications for the role of phonological variables in the processing of irregular past tense forms are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 503 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported in part by NSF Research Grant No. BNS-8820757.

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