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Title:
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Acquisition of Phonological Structure and Sociolinguistic Variables: A quantitative analysis of Spanish consonant weakening in Venezuelan children's speech
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Author:
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Manuel Díaz-Campos
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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Ohio State University
, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
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Degree Date:
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2001
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
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Subject Language(s):
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Spanish
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Director(s):
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Terrell Morgan
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Abstract:
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Studies examining phonological acquisition in children has focused
on providing generalizations describing universal patterns using
different theoretical models; descriptions of the stages of
acquisition; and developmental and functional explanations based
on children's physiological and cognitive capacities
(Jakobson 1968; Smith 1973, Stampe 1979; Macken 1980, 1992;
Locke 1983; Ingram 1988, 1992; Kent 1992; Bernhardt and
Stemberger 1998, Stemberger and Bernhardt 1999, Yoneyama,
Beckman and Edwards to appear, among others). Research on variation
in child language within these theoretical models, meanwhile,
has only taken into account the type of variation which is largely
developmental in nature, and little attention has been paid to
sociolinguistically motivated variation and its acquisition
in children's speech. Recent studies (Roberts and Labov 1995;
Roberts 1994, 1997a, 1997b) have begun to describe the acquisition
of variable phonology in English-speaking children, but they
do not provide a sociolinguistic insight in their analyses.
Finally, there is no research examining this issue in Spanish.
The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the acquisition of
sounds that undergo phonological variation in Venezuelan Spanish.
Specifically, this study has analyzed the acquisition of two variable
phonological phenomena in Venezuelan children's speech, namely
intervocalic /d/ and syllable-final /-r/. These variables were
selected because they undergo sociolinguistic variation in Venezuelan
Spanish (D'Introno and Sosa 1986; D'Introno, Rojas, and Sosa 1979).
In the case of intervocalic /d/, the pattern of variation found by
D'Introno and Sosa (1986) indicates that intervocalic /d/ is produced
as fricative in formal speech and deleted in more casual styles of
conversation. D'Introno and Sosa (1986) also found that upper-and
middle-class speakers are more likely to retain intervocalic /d/,
whereas lower-class speakers are more likely to delete it.
With regard to syllable-final /-r/, D'Introno, Rojas, and Sosa reveal
that it can be realized as flap [-r], lateral [l] or zero.
Their findings indicate that deletion is common across speakers of
all socioeconomic groups in infinitives, but that lower-class speakers
favor deletion to a greater extent than do upper-and middle-class
speakers. They also show that lateralization is of low frequency
and more likely to be found in the speech of lower-class speakers.
For the present study , 30 monolingual Spanish-speaking children were
selected from the corpus Competencia Narrativa de Niqos en Edad
Escolar (1996). The speakers a were divided into five groups
according to age (42-47 months, 48-53 months, 54-59
months, 60-65 months, and 66-77 months); two groups according to
socioeconomic class (16 lower-class and 14 upper-class speakers);
and two groups according to sex (16 male and 14 female speakers).
All tokens with intervocalic /d/ and syllable-final /-r/ were
analyzed from the speech samples of each child. Statistical analysis
was performed on the data obtained from the thirty speakers by means
of GoldVarb 2.0 (Rand and Sankoff 1990).
The findings of this dissertation demonstrate that, from a very early
age, children begin to use variable phonology with a sociolinguistic
value that is similar to that of the adult model. Children acquire
first the sociolect of their immediate community, but, with regular
exposure to other systems, they begin not only incorporating new
repertoires in their speech, but also assigning social value to them.
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