PROCESSING KNOWLEDGE Input
M, Nvelar
8.3.4 Grammatical mapping: continuity of the Language Faculty The linguistic computation performed between the input (adult model)
8.3.4.4 Continuity of child and adult grammars
If acquisition of phonology is UG-constrained continuously, then we would expect commonalities between child language acquisition and the structure of natural languages and language change.
Assimilation(e.g., English pluralization) is one of the most fundamental phono- logical processes in languages across the world, as well as in language change (Hock 1991). Bothloss(segments are deleted) andepenthesisare common (Hock 1991, 117f.).Metathesisoccurs; e.g., compare Old English and modern English
“bridd→bird” (Hock 1991). Final devoicingis common, e.g., Polish, Russian or Tamil as well as German.Reduplicationis fundamental morphologically and syntactically, e.g., Japanese subordination, (20), Indonesian pluralization, (21), or Indo-Aryan nominalization (Abbi 1992).
20. tabe (eat)
tabetabe (while eating) 21. Ibu (mother)
ibuibu (mothers)
Vowel harmony(feature assimilation across non-adjacent vowels in neighboring syllables) is common across languages, and in language change. Althoughconso- nant harmony(feature assimilation across non-adjacent consonants) is relatively rare in adult languages and more restricted than in child language, it does occur in adult grammars and grammatical change.27Apparent inconsistency between child and adult (with the child grammar showing productive consonant harmony and less vowel harmony and the adult grammar showing productive vowel harmony and less consonant harmony) deserves further study, but it lies in the amount, not the nature, of the process.28
26Kiparsky and Menn 1977; Ingram 1989, 386–392; Macken 1995.
27Note the pre-Latin to Latin change due to consonant harmony (Hock 1991, 63) pre-Lat*penkwe→*kwenkwe→Latquinque (five)
*pekwo→*kwekwo→Latcoquo (I cook)
Hock notes that such consonant harmony does not typically lead to regularization, and may remain lexically specific (1991, 64).
28Vowel production may be more difficult to characterize in featural terms in general; acoustic analyses may be necessary to identify them.
170 c h i l d l a n g ua g e 8.3.4.5 Variation
While UG can determine principles and constraints of language struc- ture, it cannot determine the actual experience (including the specific words or phonological systems) which confronts children.
Different “styles” of child phonology have been observed, e.g., “cautious sys- tem builders,” or more loose and variable ones.29Variation within child production can and does exist. While Amahl appeared to be applying a velarization rule to
“puddle” in (19a) as well as to other words which shared the defining context for the rule, he made certain lexical exceptions (Macken 1980, 9). One child demonstrated eight different versions in his attempt to produce “boat” during a twenty-minute session (Macken and Ferguson 1981, 123).30
Another young child (studied over five and a half months at about age 2, Fey and Gandour 1982) attempted to capture a “voiced/voiceless” contrast in stops in word final position by creating a new “postnasalization” rule not attested in the adult language. For words such as those in (22a) with a word final voiceless stop, the child consistently produced them without voicing. However, words with final voiced stops the child “consistently produced with voicing, and with a distinctive nasal release,” e.g., (22b). This newpostnasalization rulewas stable over several months and productive in new words as they entered the child’s vocabulary.31 22. a. drop→[daph]
eat→[ith] broke→[bokh]
b. lightbulb→[jajth-babm]
stub→[dabm]
dad→[dædn]
feed→[vidn]
Another child (aged 2.9) in (23) created a rule apparently for the purpose of elim- inating word initial fricatives, while maintaining the fricative phoneme elsewhere in the word (Leonard and McGregor 1991):
23. soap→aps
saw→as school→kus snoopy→nupis fall→af
In both cases, the children share with Amahl a veridical perception of (distinctive features in) the representation of the target word, propensity to create a productive
29Ferguson 1986; Macken and Ferguson 1983; Ferguson and Farwell 1975; Schwartz and Leonard 1982; Peters and Menn 1993.
30Apparent exceptions to generalizations in child grammar can sometimes reflect a systematic source under comprehensive and systematic analyses (e.g., Smith 1973).
31The rule appeared to reflect the child’s unique way of maintaining both veridical phonological contrasts (i.e., [+/−V] and [−continuant] or stop features) of the target and an independent phonetic constraint which appeared to require release of all word final stops.
rule-based generalization, and individual creation of the sound system of the target language.
If children attempt to match the grammatical system being acquired, cross- language variation in early deformations is also expected. Accordingly, choice of distinctive features assimilated in consonant harmony in child language appears to vary across languages, as does execution of consonant cluster reduction. Assim- ilation to nasals, marginal in English (Smith 1973, 15), is common in Hindi child language (Srivastava 1974) and Telugu (Nirmala 1981; Bai and Nirmala 1978).
24. Hindi
ni:d (slumber)→nandi:/nind: (22 months) sa:bun (soap)→mammun (24 months)
25. Telugu
ba:wundi→na:ni taNNi (water)→nanni miida(up)→miina
A velar feature may be a common assimilation target in English, as in (19a), but Telugu child language such as in (26) shows not only assimilation of the dental [d] stop to a nasal, but also assimilation of the velar /k/ to a dental.
26. Telugu(Bai and Nirmala 1978) kinda (below)→tinna
Hindi child language, (27), provides another example of nasal assimilation, and the consonants in the adult form which are velar are represented as dental in the child’s production.
27. Hindi(Sharma, 1969; Bai and Nirmala 1978) kanghi (comb)→danni
In English child language, consonant cluster reduction may result in voicing voiceless stops, especially word initially (29), while in Telugu it does not, even with borrowed vocabulary (29) (Nirmala 1981, 72):
28. spoon→bu:n
stop→dap please→bis 29. spoon→[pu:n]
please→[pi:s]
Adult-like voice onset time productions in Spanish and in Hindi are significantly delayed (after age of four), while in English their acquisition nears age two (Macken and Barton 1980; Davis 1995).
172 c h i l d l a n g ua g e
Variation in phonological deformations in early child language then appears to reflect both the child’s creativity and their analysis of the phonology of the specific language being acquired.
8.3.5 Suprasegmental dimensions32
Development of suprasegmental aspects of a language’s phonology occurs hand in hand with the development of segmental aspects seen above. It also reveals children’s linguistic computation.