LING 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Consonant Cluster, Morphological Typology, Hippopotamus
23 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
What sounds contract in my language?
What are the phonemes in my language?
—> answered during the first year of life
Before 10-12 months: subtle phonetic differences between sounds are perceived, no matter
whether sounds are used in target language!
After 10-12 months this ability is lost
Experiment (head turn paradigm)
Infants and adults presented with sounds that are contrastive in two different languages:
Hindi (H): dental vs retroflex stop [ta] vs [la]
Thomson Salish (TS): velar vs uvular ejectives [k’l] vs [q’l]
American adults and older children don't discriminate between these two sounds
Young american speaking infants do
Vowel perception by english learning infants
Loss of sensitivity for non-contrasting phonetic distinctions
-For vowels at around 6 months, and
-For consonants at 12 months
B) Production
First 4 months: local tract unsuitable for more than just a few speech-like sounds
-Larynx higher than in adults
-Tongue large relative to the size of oral cavity
4-5 months of age: vocal tract reconfigures; child gains more control over articulatory
mechanisms
Pre-linguistic “babbling”:
Speech-like sounds; lack characteristics of ‘real’ speech
Babbling
Canonical babbling (around 6 months)
Initially; strong cross-linguistic similarities
Later: characteristics of target language (coincides with infants losing perceptual abilities for
non-native sounds)
95% of consonants used in babbling [p b t d k g m n s h w j]
Infrequently found consonants [f v tf l r nj th the]
12 months of age: real first words
Order of development of speech sounds
Vowels are acquired first
Stops tend to be acquired before other consonants
Place of articulation: labials emerge first, followed by alveolars, velars and alveo-palatals
Interdentals last
Important: ability to perceive phonemic constructs develops before ability of producing them!
Early phonological processes
Syllable simplification and reduction
-Deletion of syllable final consonant (codas
-The optimal syllable - CV- is reflected in children’s early phonologies:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
> answered during the first year of life. Before 10-12 months: subtle phonetic differences between sounds are perceived, no matter whether sounds are used in target language! Infants and adults presented with sounds that are contrastive in two different languages: Hindi (h): dental vs retroflex stop [ta] vs [la] Thomson salish (ts): velar vs uvular ejectives [k"l] vs [q"l] American adults and older children don"t discriminate between these two sounds. First 4 months: local tract unsuitable for more than just a few speech-like sounds. Tongue large relative to the size of oral cavity. 4-5 months of age: vocal tract reconfigures; child gains more control over articulatory mechanisms. Later: characteristics of target language (coincides with infants losing perceptual abilities for non-native sounds) 95% of consonants used in babbling [p b t d k g m n s h w j] Infrequently found consonants [f v tf l r nj th the] Stops tend to be acquired before other consonants.
