Acquisition of Phonetics and Phonology Presenters: Silvia Becker (LN Hauptstudium) Alice Mazurek (TN...

Acquisition of Phonetics

and Phonology

Presenters:

Silvia Becker (LN Hauptstudium)

Alice Mazurek (TN Hauptstudium)

Contents

Introduction Infant Speech Perception Production Early Speech Production Morphology

Introduction

Phonetics: study of the characteristics of speech sounds

Phonology: description of the system and patterns of speech sounds; mental aspect of the sounds in a language

Morphology: study of forms; analyzes basic elements of language

Infant Speech Perception

Experimental paradigms for testing infants

Categorical perception of infants Other speech perception abilities of

infants Changes in perception over the course

of the first year of life

General Information on Infant Speech Perception

Rich field of study Ability of infants to recognize

differences in speakers when relevant and to ignore it, when not relevant

Ability to differenciate utterances of the infant‘s native language from those of foreign languages

Infant Speech Perception

Fundamental problem: determining what constitutes a sound in the target language

First step: perceiving destinctions between sounds and perceiving speech as phonetic categories

Experimental Paradigms for Testing Infants

Four experimental paradigms:

1) Measuring heart rate

2) Measuring sucking rate

3) Visual Fixation Procedure

4) The Head Turn Preference Procedure

Categorical Perception of Infants

Young infants perceive consonants categorically

Voiced Onset Time (VOT)

- prevoiced

- voiced or voiceless unaspirated

- voiceless (aspirated)

Other Speech Perception Abilities of Infants

From birth infants are sensitive to many phonetic distinctions

Vowel distinction

Changes in Perception over the Course of the First Year of Life

• Distinguish contrasts which are non- phonemic in the target language distinguish only phonemic distinctions in the target language

• Lose their perceptual abilities for non-native sounds as their babbling begins to take on characteristics of the input language

Language and the MindProf. R. HickeySS 2006

Acquisition of phonology

Schmidt, Anke Schmidt, Sarah (Grundstudium LN) (Hauptstudium LN)

Overview

1. Production of sounds

• Babbling

2. Early speech production

• Building a system of contrasts

• Phonological processes

• The importance of the stressed syllable

3. Summary

4. References

Production of sounds Babbling

sounds constrained by anatomy of vocal tract

configured for vegetative requirements: sucking, breathing, burping, crying

larynx higher shorter pharyngeal cavity tongue relatively big

Production of sounds Babbling

2-4 months:

– begin to coo, laugh– no speech sounds produced

Production of sounds Babbling

4-5 months:

– vocal tract reconfigures– begin to babble– speech- like sounds– stimulated by speech of others– babbling lacks spectral, temporal characteristics

Production of sounds Babbling

6-7 months:

– “canonical babbling”– consonant & vowel sounds – characteristics of “real” cv– often reduplicated

– e.g. bababa or gaga

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:

1. Minimal consonant inventory

Labial Nonlabial

p t

k

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:

2. Embodiment of additional features

Labial Coronal Dorsal

p t k

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:

3. Voicing becomes a contrastive feature

Labial Coronal Dorsal

Voiceless p t k

Voiced b d g

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Development of children´s inventories:

4. May then incorporate nasality

Labial Coronal Dorsal

p t k

b d g

m n

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Sonorant constraining contrasts:

Sonorant Nonsonorant

m, n, l p, s, d

relationship between adult´s and child´s pronunciation:

Target sound Child´s sound

p p, s, d

n m, n, l

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

Additional contrasts to sonorants

+coronal/-coronal

+voice/-voice+sonorant/-

sonorant

d, t, s, n, l vs. p, m, k

d, m, n, l vs. p, s, t, k

m, n, l vs. p, t, d, s, k

Speech production Building a system of contrasts

more familiar phonetic feature matrix

sound sonorant coronal voice

p - - -

t - + -

d - + +

k - - -

m + - +

n, l + + +

s - + -

Speech production Phonological processes

Substitution processes

1. Stopping– fricatives [ f, v, 2, 3, s, z, $, g ] replaced

with stop consonant [ p, b, t, d, k, g ]

– <sea> [ ti:]– <sing> [ tin ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Substitution processes

2. Fronting– velar [ k, g, n ], palatal sounds [ c ] replaced with

alveolar consonants [ t, d, n, l, s, z ]

– <goose> [ du:s ]– <goat> [ dut ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Substitution processes

3. Gliding– glide [ w, j ] substituted for liquid sound

[ l, r ]

– <ready> [ wedi ]– <lap> [ j@p ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Substitution processes

4. Vocalization

5. Vowel neutralization

Speech production Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes

1. Voicing– two separate processes:– consonants tend to be voiced when preceding a

vowel– devoiced at the end of a syllable

– <paper> [ beibq ]– <bed> [ bet ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes

2. Consonant harmony– in C1VC2 contexts, consonants tend to

assimilate to each other– three frequent patterns

Speech production Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes

2. Consonant harmonyi. velar assimilation– apical consonants tend to assimilate to a

neighbouring velar consonant

– <duck> [ gvk ]– <tongue> [ gvn ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes

2. Consonant harmonyii. labial assimilation– apical consonants tend to assimilate to a

neighbouring labial consonant

– <tub> [ bvb ]– <steps> [ beps ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Assimilatory processes

3. Progressive vowel assimilation– unstressed vowel assimilates to a

preceding stressed vowel

– <flower> [ /fá:wa ]– <hammer> [ /ha:ma ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes

– Specific phonological processes

– To simplify syllable structure

– Towards a basic CV syllable

Speech production Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes

1. Cluster reduction– consonant cluster is reduced to single consonant

– <dress> [ des ]– <clown> [ kaun ]– German: (to write) <schreiben> [ saibqn ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes

2. Deletion of final consonants– CVC consonant is reduced to CV

– <bike> [ bai ]– <more> [ mv ]

Speech production Phonological processes

Syllable structure processes

3. Deletion of unstressed syllables

4. Reduplication

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

children know there are words don’t know structure problem: speech signal is continuous initially no lexicon

Must apply system for segmenting signal into words

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

“metrical segmentation strategy” structure characterizes language

– explicit segmentation

understanding word boundaries English template:

– first syllable of content word is stressed

major role in defining boundaries

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

bi- syllabic words:

reduce target to single syllable:– stressed syllable

when second syllable stressed:– preservation of first segment of word, not syllable

more than stressed syllable is represented in lexical entries

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

target child’s pronunciation

balloon [bu][bun][bum][bu:n]

guitar [tar][ga][ga:r]

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

polysyllabic words

hypothesis: bias for final syllables

– e.g. tri-syllabic

final rime preserved second syllable stressed

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

target child’s pronunciation

remember [memq][membq]

another [nv3Q][nvdQ][nv2Q][nv:Q]

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

first syllable stressed:

final rime target = final rime child stressed syllable target= stressed

syllable child

Speech production The importance of the stressed syllable

target child’s pronunciation

elephant [/efent][/efvnt][/e:fint][/e:fvnt]

medicine [/mesin][/me:sin]

Summary Production of sounds

– Babbling: first imitation of consonants and vowels Early speech production

– Building a system of contrasts: important to distinguish between sounds and therefore words, it shows how the child learns to place sounds into categories

– Phonological processes: the children undergo several processes in order to acquire the huge variety of the language's phonology

– The importance of the stressed syllable: children use stress to locate word boundaries

References

Bußmann, Hadumod. 2002. Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag.

Dretzke, Burkhard (1998). Modern British and American English Pronunciation. A Basic Textbook. Paderborn u.a.: Schöningh

Fletcher, Paul and Michael Garman (eds) (1989) Language acquisition. Studies in first language development. 2nd edition. (Cambridge: University Press).

A. Fromkin et al. (2000). Linguistics. An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Massachussets: Oxford University Press.

Thank you for your attention!

The Acquisition of English Morphology

Martina Kleinebreil (TN) Grundstudium

Adam von Wald (TN) Grundstudium

Definition:

Morphology is concerned with the study of word forms or the internal structure of words and the process of word formation.

A morpheme is the smallest unit which carries meaning.

e.g. talk talk-ing talk-s talk-ed

Morphemes can be divided into free and bound morphemes.

- Free morphemes (nouns, verbs, ...)can stand on their own.

- Bound morphemes cannot stand on their own.

All affixes in English are bound morphemes:

prefixes are added to the beginning of the stem: re-build

suffixes are added to the end of a stem: build-er

Bound morphemes can be further divided into:

inflectional morphemesandderivational morphemes

Inflectional morphemes show the grammatical function of a word, e.g. whether a word is singular or plural, past tense, ...

Derivational morphemes are used to build new words.So derivational morphemes are prefixes and suffixes.

(re-, ex-, -less, -ly)

Learning Morphological Rules

The Linguistic Rule:

“Since normal language use is at least to some extent ‘motivated‘, ‘free‘ or ‘creative‘, it is obvious that language acqusition must not be limited to the mere imitation or rote learning of forms and their associated meanings, but must also involve the extraction or abstraction of a certain quantity of general pricipals or rules.“ (Baker and Derwing)

Learning Morphological Rules

Some rule learning takes place in language acqusition, but how do we exploit or test this process?

“A regular anthology [i.e. rule] permits a speaker to utter speech-forms which he has not heard...“ (Bloomfield)

Observation through testing, e.g. Testing morphological rule knowledge and progression with new words (for the speaker)

The Berko study(1958)

-test for rule knowledge with pre-school and first grade children

- use of nonsense stems

Result:

- some kind of morphological rule learning takes place

- quite a number of mophological rules have been acquired by the age of 5 years or even earlier

Problems:

- The study was too restricted in conception and scope

two key questions are left:

-What particular rules might have been learned?

- How does such rule-knowledge develop over time?

Progression of Development

Innes (1974)

Better sample – 120 boys and girls 2-8 years old

Remarkable agreement with Berko, plus a new developmental aspect

Progress order –

1. No knowledge of a pluralization rule

2. Mastery of all but the fricative stems

3. Mastery of all but the sibilant fricative stems {s, z, etc.}

4. Mastery of all but the {z} stems

5. Mastery of all the stems

Progession of DevelopmentDrewing - Baker (1976)

Derivational progress:Construction Preschool Early Middle Late Adult

Agent 7 63 80 86 96

Instrument 7 35 45 64 59

Adjective 0 30 55 86 100

Adverb 0 13 20 79 81

Progression of Development

There are many morphological rules

So....

There must be many different tests

Progress is slow in this field

Sources: Bußmann, Hadumod. 2002. Lexikon der

Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd edition. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag.

Dretzke, Burkhard (1998). Modern British and American English Pronunciation. A Basic Textbook. Paderborn u.a.: Schöningh

Fletcher, Paul and Michael Garman (eds) (1989) Language acquisition. Studies in first language development. 2nd edition. (Cambridge: University Press).

A. Fromkin et al. (2000). Linguistics. An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Massachussets: Oxford University Press.