Upload
imogen-taylor
View
221
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
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.