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Title:
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Multiple Parallel Grammars in the Acquisition of Stress in Greek L1
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Author:
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Marina Tzakosta
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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Universiteit Leiden
, Leiden Centre for Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Language Acquisition
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Subject Language(s):
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Greek
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Director(s):
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Jeroen van de Weijer
Vincent van Heuven
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Abstract:
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This dissertation focuses on the acquisition of stress in Greek L1. It investigates phonological development in a language with a lexical accent system, where the position of stress is determined by the phonology-morphology interface. It demonstrates that the acquisition of stress in lexical accent systems proceeds differently compared to languages with less complex or non-lexical accentual systems.
The production of multiple truncated outputs of various prosodic shapes as well as faithfully produced forms during the same phases of phonological development lead to the conclusion that children employ multiple parallel grammars generated by the permutation of universal and innate constraints, and follow several developmental paths during the acquisition process. This implies that language development does not proceed in a strictly stage-like fashion fashion, as has often been previously assumed. I argue that learning proceeds in three major phases. In the first phase, the child grammar is in a state where all markedness constraints dominate all faithfulness constraints. Then, during the second developmental phase constraint permutation results in a radical expansion of grammars. Constraint permutation provides a huge number of grammars. In language
acquisition, all possible rankings predict all possible developmental paths children follow in their task of acquiring the phonology of their language. In the third phase of their phonological development, Greek children are considered to have reached the final state of the adult grammar.
Two interesting observations stem from the Greek child data: First, the number of accessed grammars may decrease as learning proceeds, leading to the use of only one grammar, i.e. the fully faithful adult grammar. More specifically, if learning proceeds without regressive steps, grammars are gradually filtered and left out from the multiple grammars' inventory up to the point children reach the final state of the target grammar. However, if regressions to earlier stages of development occur, then grammars may be activated and deactivated in parallel during this second phase of development. This is possible until positive evidence and frequency effects of child-directed speech leads the child to the adoption of the 'correct' final grammar. Both of these distinct developmental patterns characterize the phonological development of Greek children.
Output variation further challenges the idea of the trochaic bias, according to which there is a cross-linguistic preference for disyllabic trochees in child speech. Additionally, the notion of 'stage' is not completely abandoned but it is revised and redefined. Here, a stage is not synonymous with a period of time in which children's productions are relatively uniform. Rather, it refers to a phase in language acquisition, a chronological slot, associated with a set of co-emerging grammars that share specific characteristics.
The multiple parallel grammars model developed here refers to production but also has important implications for perception, since it makes the prediction that the latter may be characterized by multiple grammars as well. It may also be relevant for the study of synchrony and diachrony, given that it can provide a unified account of synchronic, diachronic and language change phenomena.
This study will be of interest to linguistis who study phonological theory in general and language acquisition in particular.
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Page Updated: 29-Nov-2009
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