Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Phonotactics and morphophonology in early child language: Evidence from Dutch |
| Author: | Tania S. Zamuner |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Homepage: | http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~tzamuner/ |
| Institution: | University of British Columbia |
| Author: | Annemarie Kerkhoff |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Homepage: | http://www.let.uu.nl/~Annemarie.Kerkhoff/personal/ |
| Institution: | Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS |
| Author: | Paula Fikkert |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics |
| Subject Language: |
Dutch
|
| Abstract: | 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 [pɛt]~[pɛtən] (cap~caps) but does in [bɛt]~[bɛdən] (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., [kɛtən]~[kɛt] and [kɛdən]~[kɛt]). 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. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Applied Psycholinguistics Vol. 33, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|


