First words and beyond

PROCESSING KNOWLEDGE Input

8.3 First words and beyond

8.3.1 Early phonological deformations

It would seem that in many ways, children have “cracked the code”

of the speech stream before speaking a first word. Yet their first words (about

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Table 8.1 First twenty-five recorded forms of four normal children, based on published diary information in Velten 1943, Menn 1971, Leopold 1947 and Ingram 1974a

Joan Velten Daniel Menn^* Hildegard Leopold Jennika Ingram

0;10 1;4 0;10 1;3

up [ap] byebye [bab] pretty [prəti] blanket [ba]

bottle [ba] [bæ bæ] there [dεi] [babi]

0;11 1;6 [dti] byebye [ba]

bus [bas] hi [hæ] [de:] [baba]

put on[baza] [haj] 0;11 daddy [da]

that [za] 1;7 pretty [priti] [dada]

1;0 no [Oⁿo] there [dε:] [dadi]

down [da] [no] ticktock [tak] dot [dat]

out [at] [nu] 1;0 [dati]

away [ba^.ba] hello [hwow] ball [ba] hi [hai]

pocket[bat] squirrel[gæ] Blumen [bu] mommy [ma]

1;1 [gow] da [da:] [mami]

fuff [af] 1;8 opa [pa] [mama]

[faf] nose [o] papa [pa-pa] no [no]

put on[bada] ear [iJ] piep [pi] see [si]

1;2 1;9 [pip] see that [siæt]

push [bus] boot [bu] pretty [prti] that [da]

dog [uf] nice [njaj] sch-sch [ʃʃ] 1;4

pie [ba.] [njajF] ticktock [tita] hot [hat]

1;3 light [aj] [tat-t] hi [hai]

duck [dat] 1;10 1;1 [haidi]

lamb [bap] car [gar] ball [ba] up [ap]

1;4 cheese [dˇziF] bimbam [bt] [api]

M [am] Stevie [i:v] da [da] no [nodi]

N [an.] egg [egY] Gertrude[dεε:da] [dodi]

in [n.] apple [æp] [də:di] [noni]

1;5–1;7 kiss [giF] kick [ti]

doll [da’] up [∧f] kritze [tttsə]

S [as] mouth [mæwf]

O [u’] eye [aj]

R [a]

nice [nas]

*.Note: If sound was indeterminate, Menn would use a capital letter, e.g.

F means fricative of some kind.

Source: D. Ingram (1976).Phonological Disability in Children.London:

E. Arnold. Reprinted by permission of Hodder Arnold.

Table 8.2 Speech sample from CLAL Child:oh! man!

Child:əfix it

Adult(BL): You fixed it? Let me hear. Did you fix it? Let me see. Is it fixed?

Child:yea,əfix Adult: you fixed it?

Child:bwok Adult: It broke?

Child:əbwokt Adult: It broked?

Child:See (ovə) fire

Adult: Is that for the fire? Is that for the electricity? (referring to cord) Child: erεksi

Adult: Where’s the fire?

Child:əhan(t/d)

Adult: In your hand, there’s fire? I don’t see any fire. Do you feel it?

Child:əfeel it Child:Ow! Ih bwokt

Adult: It broked. That’s terrible. Did your finger break?

child:oh, Ih bwokt

Adult: Oh no, don’t burn your finger Child:əfire

Child:han(t/d)

Adult: Is a fire in your hand?

Child:əhurt

Adult: Oh no, That’s terrible.

Child:əhurt Child:əhurt Child:əhurt

*Note: This sample (CLAL, BGO 2 28 97, 2.2) involves a discussion of electronic equipment in a living room (the “fire” and “hurt” are imag- inary). At this time, this child is often holophrastic, but does create two or three-word utterances.

twelve months) and sentences (over the first three years) demonstrate many months of phonological development before production closely resembles that of adults. Table 8.1 shows a set of first words (Ingram 1976, 17), and table 8.2 early sentences.¹⁵

Several phonological “processes” frequently deform the child’s early produc- tions, e.g., table 8.3.¹⁶ Many sounds are omitted or are substituted by others.

15From the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab [CLAL].

16The term “deformation” here is used to refer to the production of a word which does not match the adult form.

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Table 8.3 Phonological processes in early child language^* Deletion/Omission

Consonant cluster reductions e.g., ‘broke’→bok Final consonant deletion

e.g., ‘it’→i-h Unstressed syllable deletion

e.g., ‘banana’→naenə Assimilation

Regressive assimilation e.g., ‘duck’→g

^k

‘doggy’→goggy

‘nipple’→mibu Progressive assimilation

e.g., ‘kiss’ – gik

‘cloth’→g

^k

Reduplication

e.g., ‘daddy’ – dada

e.g., ‘stomach’→tum tum Substitution

Gliding

e.g., substitution of [w] or [y] for liquids

‘broke’→bwok

‘rabbit’→wabbit Fronting

e.g., substitution of front consonants such as [t] or [d] for back such as velars [k] [g]

‘kitty’→ditty Stopping

e.g., substitution of stop consonants for fricatives and affricate

‘shoes’→tuid Voicing

e.g., voicing word initial consonants

‘pie’→bie

‘pocket’→bat Devoicing

e.g., devoicing final consonants

‘knob’→nop

*Note: See Ingram 1976

Sounds areassimilatedto each other (made to become similar in pronunciation, either completely or partially). Assimilation operates on adjacent or non-adjacent sounds, causing them to share some or all features, e.g.,placeand/or manner features. An earlier sound in the word may be assimilated to one which follows it (regressive assimilation) or a later sound may be assimilated to one which

precedes it (progressive assimilation). Syllables may be repeated (reduplication) (e.g., Fee and Ingram 1980).

Speech comprehension also develops. Infants (fourteen months) were taught to link two nonsense labels with two different brightly colored moving clay objects, where these labels differed only in a single phonetic (place) feature in the initial consonant, e.g., “dih” versus “bih”. The infants did not notice a switch in word–

object pairings, e.g. the “dih” referent now called “bih”, but did notice this switch when “lif” changed to “neem” and when “bih” and “dih” were related to two different graphic displays – checkerboard patterns. These results suggested that although there is not a general loss of perceptual ability at fourteen months, word learning is still developing. Surprisingly, eight-month-olds did notice the “bih”–

“dih” switch (in a simplified procedure), suggesting that there is development between eight and fourteen months and that some “functional reorganization”

occurs about this time (Stager and Werker 1997, 382).¹⁷

How do we explain this apparent relapse in perception and production, fol- lowing the accomplishments during the first twelve months? A learning theory which operated simply in terms offrequencies of sounds children hear could not work. The phoneme /∂/ (voiced “th” as in “that”), for example, is one of the most frequently occurring word-initial consonants in English; yet children acquir- ing English frequently deform it (Pye, Ingram and List 1987, 183f.). Although [s] is highly frequent, children acquiring English often substitute other sound for it.

There are several possible types of explanation, which may operate alone or together.

r Are children biologicallypre-ordainedto produce deformations?

r Do children suffer from “mushy mouth”or“mushy ear,” i.e., an inabil- ity to motorically produce or to perceive the sound combinations nec- essary?

r Are children confronting a task ofGrammatical Mappingby which the phonological system of their language must be created?

8.3.2 Is acquisition of phonology pre-ordained?

If acquisition of phonology were biologically pre-ordained, then chil- dren in all languages would evidence similar deformations and universal order in development.

Roman Jakobson (1941/1968; 1971/2004) provides a prototype biologically determined “maturational theory.”¹⁸Here, the structure of linguistic knowledge is viewed as correlating with the structure of language acquisition, mediated by

17See Shvachkin 1948 and Garnica 1973 for earlier behavioral studies related to the child’s percep- tion of distinctive features after the first words.

18Jakobson’s theory has not been fully explored as a language acquisition model. Acquisition orders predicted by Jakobson’s theory to some degree “depend on the target language because that’s what’s being learned – so the maturation is into the particular properties of that language

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Jakobson’s Hierarchy of Development

cooing and babbling period indeterminate sounds (neither consonant nor vowel)

words

consonant vowel

a (wide) P

Oral P

Nasal M labial

P

dental labial dental

T M N

“front”

P, T

“front”

M, N