Heather Goad

Input Elaboration, Head Faithfulness and Evidence for Representation in the Acquisition of Left-edge Clusters in West Germanic

Several recent investigations of the development of left-edge clusters in West Germanic languages have demonstrated that the relative sonority of adjacent consonants plays a key role in children’s reduction patterns (e.g. Fikkert 1994, Gilbers & Den Ouden 1994, Chin 1996, Barlow 1997, Bernhardt & Stemberger 1998, Gierut 1999, Ohala 1999, Gnanadesikan this volume). These authors have argued that, for a number of children, at the stage in development when only one member of a left-edge cluster is produced, it is the least sonorous segment that survives, regardless of where this segment appears in the target string or the structural position that it occupies (head, dependent, or appendix). To briefly illustrate, while the more sonorous /S/ 2 is lost in favour of the stop in /S/+stop clusters, /S/ is retained in /S/+sonorant clusters; similarly, the least sonorous stop survives in both /S/+stop and stop+sonorant clusters, in spite of the fact that it occurs in different positions in the two strings. To account for reduction patterns such as these, a structural difference between /S/-initial and stop-initial clusters need not be assumed. This would seem to fare well in view of much of the recent constraint-based literature which de-emphasises the role of prosodic constituency in favour of phonetically-based explanations of phonological phenomena (see e.g. Hamilton 1996, Wright 1996, Kochetov 1999, Steriade 1999, Cote 2000). In this paper, we focus on a second set of reduction patterns for left-edge clusters, one which is not addressed in most of the sonority-based literature on cluster reduction in child language (L1): these patterns reveal a preference for structural heads to survive. For example, while the stop is retained in clusters of the shape /S/+stop and stop+sonorant, it is the sonorant that survives in /S/+sonorant clusters. The only sources that we have found where explicit reference is made to the retention of heads are Spencer (1986), who reanalyses Amahl’s data

Ultimate Attainment in Interlanguage Grammars: A Prosodic Approach.

In this article, we argue against the Representational Deficit Hypothesis, according to which second language (L2) speakers can never acquire functional categories or features that are absent in the first language (L1), suggesting that fossilization is inevitable. Instead, we support the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, which argues that the ultimate attainment of L2 speakers is constrained by L1 prosodic representations; these representations can, however, be minimally adapted to accommodate the needs of the L2 under certain conditions. We investigate the L2 acquisition of English by 10 Mandarin speakers, by means of an experiment involving judgement and production of tense and participial morphology. Mandarin lacks overt tense inflection, while English inflection is represented by adjunction to the Prosodic Word, an option not available in Mandarin. We show that Mandarin speakers have few problems interpreting English tense appropriately, contrary to the predictions of the Representational Deficit Hypothesis. A detailed analysis is offered of their production of the morphology, which motivates the claim that the prosodic representation required for regular inflection in English can be built by combining licensing relations available in Mandarin. We conclude that target-like prosodic representations are ultimately attainable for at least some functional material which is absent from the L1.

Phonological transfer and levels of representation: The perceptual acquisition of Thai voice and aspiration by English and French speakers *

In this article, we show that the generative phonological distinction between lexical and surface representation can explain apparently contradictory orders of acquisition of L2 voice and aspiration contrasts by native speakers of English. Cross-language speech perception research has shown that English speakers distinguish synthetic voice onset time counterparts of aspirated–unaspirated minimal pairs more readily than voiced–voiceless. Here, we present evidence that in the perceptual acquisition of the same Thai contrasts, English speakers acquire voicing before aspiration. These divergent orders are argued to be due to the levels of representation tapped by the methodologies employed in each case: surface representations in the earlier studies, and lexical in the present one. The resulting difference in outcomes is attributed to the presence of aspiration in surface, but not lexical, representations in English (Chomsky and Halle, 1968). To address the further question of whether allophonic aspiration in English aids in the eventual acquisition of contrastive aspiration in Thai, we compare the developmental progression of the English learners to that of native speakers of French, whose L1 contains only a voicing contrast, and no surface aspiration. The performance of the anglophone group improves over time, suggesting that L1 surface features can be lexicalized in L2 acquisition,even though they are not initially transferred across levels.

What underlies inflectional error patterns in genetic dysphasia

Abstract We compare linguistic and non-linguistic explanations which attempt to account for the difficulties that individuals with genetic dysphasia experience with inflectional morphology. The non-linguistic explanations that we focus on are low performance IQ and performance deficits which are manifested at the level of auditory processing or at the mapping between representation and articulatory output. We argue that none of these hypotheses can account for the patterns observed; the impairment lies in the construction of the grammar itself. We hypothesise that the dysphasic grammar lacks sublexical (morphological) features which mark inflectional information in languages. Consequently, the grammar does not contain the morphological rules which introduce these features and, following from this, there is no structure internal to ‘inflected’ words. We summarise the experimental evidence which supports this hypothesis.

DEPENDENCY AND COMPLEMENTARITY IN VOWEL GEOMETRY

Early on in generative phonology, it was pointed out that feature co-occurrence constraints do more than constrain underlying representations: they function throughout the derivation to curb the Output of phonological rules äs well (Stanley 1967; Chomsky & Halle 1968; Kisseberth 1970). The observation naturally led to a formal problem: how should constraints be encoded in the grammar? This question continues to play a significant role in theory development, both on the specification of features and on their geometry. In this paper, the question is addressed with regard to a subset of the features which characterize vowels, [high], [low] and [atr]. I propose a configuration of these features which is largely motivated by co-occurrence constraints. After providing the geometry and discussing underspecification in section 2, I focus on the location of [low] in section 3 and on the location of [atr] in section 4.

Indirect Positive Evidence in the Acquisition of a Subset Grammar

ABSTRACT This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner’s L1 made by native speakers of the learner’s L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative evidence or, in certain L1–L2 combinations, using direct positive evidence. The utility of IPE is tested by providing native speakers of English with indirect evidence of the phonotactic constraints holding of word-initial clusters in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which are a subset of those in English. Participants were tested on the well-formedness of BP-like words, and the results indicate that approximately one-third were able to use the IPE to make appropriate BP-like judgments. This suggests that IPE may be another source of evidence that learners can use to build a grammar that is a subset of their own L1 grammar.

A longitudinal study of individual differences in the acquisition of new vowel contrasts

Abstract This study explores how individuals’ second language cue weighting strategies change over time and across different contrasts. The study investigates the developmental changes in perceptual cue weighting of two English vowel contrasts (/i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/ae/) by adult and child Korean learners of English during their first year of immersion in Canada. Longitudinal results revealed that adult learners had an initial advantage in L2 perceptual acquisition over children at least for the /i/-/ɪ/ contrast, but after one year some children showed greater improvements especially on the more difficult /ɛ/-/ae/ contrast. Both groups of Korean learners showed different acquisition patterns between the two vowel contrasts: they used both spectral and duration cues to distinguish /i/-/ɪ/ but generally only duration to distinguish /ɛ/-/ae/. By examining cue weights over time, this study partially confirmed the hypothesized developmental stages for the acquisition of L2 vowels first proposed by Escudero (2000) for Spanish learners of English. However, some unpredicted patterns were also identified. Most importantly, the longitudinal results suggest that individual differences in cue weighting are not merely random variability in the learner’s response patterns, but are systematically associated with the developmental trajectories of individual learners and those trajectories vary according to vowel contrast.

Individual differences in second language speech perception across tasks and contrasts: The case of English vowel contrasts by Korean learners

Abstract: The present study examines whether individual differences in second language (L2) learners’ perceptual cue weighting strategies reflect systematic abilities. We tested whether cue weights indicate proficiency in perception using a naturalistic discrimination task as well as whether cue weights are related across contrasts for individual learners. Twenty-four native Korean learners of English completed a two-alternative forced choice identification task on /ɪ/-/i/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ contrasts varying orthogonally in formant frequency and duration to determine their perceptual cue weights. They also completed a two-talker AX discrimination task on natural productions of the same vowels. In the cue-weighting task, we found that individual L2 learners varied greatly in the extent to which they relied on particular phonetic cues. However, individual learners’ perceptual weighting strategies were consistent across contrasts. We also found that more native-like performance on this task – reliance on spectral differences over duration – was related to better recognition of naturally produced vowels in the discrimination task. Therefore, the present study confirms earlier reports that learners vary in the extent to which they rely on particular phonetic cues. Additionally, our results demonstrate that these individual differences reflect systematic cue use across contrasts as well as the ability to discriminate naturally produced stimuli.

Compensatory Strategies in the Developmental Patterns of English /s/: Gender and Vowel Context Effects

Purpose The developmental trajectory of English /s/ was investigated to determine the extent to which childrens speech productions are acoustically fine-grained. Given the hypothesis that young children have adultlike phonetic knowledge of /s/, the following were examined: (a) whether this knowledge manifests itself in acoustic spectra that match the gender-specific patterns of adults, (b) whether vowel context affects the spectra of /s/ in adults and children similarly, and (c) whether children adopt compensatory production strategies to match adult acoustic targets. Method Several acoustic variables were measured from word-initial /s/ (and /t/) and the following vowel in the productions of children aged 2 to 5 years and adult controls using 2 sets of corpora from the Paidologos database. Results Gender-specific patterns in the spectral distribution of /s/ were found. Acoustically, more canonical /s/ was produced before vowels with higher F1 (i.e., lower vowels) in children, a context where lingual articulation is challenging. Measures of breathiness and vowel intrinsic F0 provide evidence that children use a compensatory aerodynamic mechanism to achieve their acoustic targets in articulatorily challenging contexts. Conclusion Together, these results provide evidence that childrens phonetic knowledge is acoustically detailed and gender specified and that speech production goals are acoustically oriented at early stages of speech development.

A child-specific compensatory mechanism in the acquisition of English /s/

This study examines corpus data involving word-initial [sV] productions from 79 children aged 2–5 (Edwards & Beckman 2008) in comparison with a corpus of word-initial [sV] syllables produced by 13 adults. We quantified target-like /s/ production using spectral moment analysis on the frication portion (high center of gravity, low SD, and low skewness). In adults, we found that higher vowels (low F1 after normalization) were associated with more target-like /s/ productions, likely reflecting a tighter constriction. In children, older subjects produced more target-like outputs overall. However, unlike adults, children’s outputs before low vowels were more target-like, regardless of age. This is unexpected given the articulatory challenges of producing /s/ in low vowel contexts. Further investigation found that high F1 (low vowels) was associated with louder /s/ (relative to V) and more encroachment of sibilant noise on the following vowel (high harmonics-to-noise ratio). This finding suggests that young children may be increasing airflow during /s/ production to compensate for a less tight constriction when the jaw must lower for the following vowel. Thus, children may adopt a more accessible mechanism, different from adults, to compensate for their immature lingual gestures, possibly in an attempt to maximize phonological contrasts in word-initial position.