Phonotactics and morphophonology in early child language: Evidence from Dutch  

Oleh:

ZAMUNER, TANIA S.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Applied Psycholinguistics vol. 33 no. 3 (2012), page 481-499.
Fulltext: ZAMUNER_TANIA_S.pdf (117.64KB)

Isi artikel

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 [p?t]~[p?t?n] (cap~caps) but does in [b?t]~[b?d?n] (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., [k?t?n]~[k?t] and [k?d?n]~[k?t]). 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.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali