2. Representations of [voice]: Evidence from acquisition

Acquiring a new second language contrast: an analysis of the English laryngeal system of native speakers of Dutch

“…Macken and Barton (1979) conducted a longitudinal study with four children acquiring American English and found that in a first stage the children produced all stops in the short-lag VOT region, which was taken to be between 0-20 ms for labial and alveolar stops and between 0-40 ms for velars. The same pattern was found by Kager et al (2007). On the basis of the CLPF (Claartje Levelt and Paula Fikkert) database for Dutch (Fikkert, 1994;Levelt, 1994) and the Nijmegen Database in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 1999), Kager et al found that children learning Dutch produced devoicing errors (e.g.…”

“…According to the second approach the feature [voice] is the contrastive feature in both Dutch and English and the differences between these two languages in terms of the voice contrast are purely phonetic. Kager et al (2007) have termed these two approaches the 'Multiple Feature Hypothesis' and the 'Single Feature Hypothesis', respectively. While the results have shown that the voice contrast in the English speech of the L1 Dutch speakers is one between prevoiced and long-lag stops, this section briefly discusses what the results tell us about the laryngeal features in Eng Dutch according to the Single and the Multiple Feature Hypotheses.…”

“…stops that were neither prevoiced nor aspirated. Kager et al (2007) note that these results can be interpreted phonetically under an Ease of Articulation analysis: if it is assumed that short-lag, unaspirated stops are easiest to produce (Kager et al, in Van der Feest, 2007: 53), the Dutch-and German-learning children's early productions might be the result of a drive towards these unmarked realizations. 2 1 Another issue that is subject to debate is whether laryngeal features are unary or binary.…”

“…Voiced stops are then considered to be marked for [voice] in Dutch, but unmarked in English, while voiceless stops are unmarked in Dutch, but marked for [spread glottis] in English (Iverson and Salmons, 1995;2003;2006;Avery and Idsardi, 2001). Evidence for this view has been based on first language acquisition (Kager et al, 2007;Van der Feest, 2007) as well as on historical data (Honeybone, 2005).…”

Child L2 development: A longitudinal case study on Voice Onset Times in word-initial stops

“…Children learning a voicing language, on the other hand, acquire the contrast between prevoiced and short-lag VOT at around the age of 3; 0 or even later. Whereas the realization of short-lag voiceless stops is acquired much earlier, the production of prevoicing may not be fully acquired by the age of 3;0 (Kager, Van der Feest, Fikkert, Kerkhoff & Zamuner, 2007 ;Kuijpers, 1993 ;Macken & Barton, 1980 ;Van der Feest, 2007). Table 1 summarizes the VOT ranges for Dutch and English children and adults reported in the literature.…”