Acquisition of Correct Vowel Production

Abstract

There have been relatively few studies of the course of acquisition of correct vowel production. The present study suggests this gives an illusory impression that vowels are acquired easily and are of little theoretical interest. Despite a relatively precocious rate of vocabulary acquisition over the period from 14 to 20 months, the subject studied produced less than 60% of her vowels correctly according to evidence from phonetic transcriptions. A complex pattern of vowel preferences and errors was only partially related to typical prespeech babbling preferences, but was strongly related to word structure variables (monosyllabic vs. disyllabic) including stress patterns of disyllabic words, as reflected in patterns of relative frequencies of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables. Consonant-vowel interdependence was observed, in both the favoring of high front vowels in the environment of alveolar consonants, and a reciprocal relation between vowel reduplication and consonant reduplication in disyllabic words.

The sources of phonological knowledge: a cross-linguistic perspective

“…Additional vowel changes involve a shift from front rounded to front unrounded or back rounded vowel (both in the same token of Finnish tyttö), in accord with markedness theory for vowels, and from a back rounded to a front unrounded vowel after [n], in accord with the CV-associations posited by Davis & MacNeilage (1990:…”

Phonological development: toward a “radical” templatic phonology

“…A first lexicon of some five to ten identifiable, spontaneously produced adult-based words would be the result of that match. As a result, the earliest word forms of children acquiring di¤erent languages are broadly similar (with limited phonotactic shapes and consonant and vowel patterns, as indicated above), being rooted in the physiological constraints that govern vocal production in the babbling and first word period (Locke 1983;Locke and Pearson 1992;Davis and MacNeilage 1990Kent and Bauer 1985;Kent 1992;see Appendix B, Vihman 1996, which presents the first few words of 27 children acquiring seven di¤erent languages; as well as Tables 6a, 7a, 8a, and 9a below, which also sample the first word forms of children acquiring di¤erent ambient languages).…”

“…That is, it is often apparent that only a small range of the many possible adult word patterns are attempted, with certain phonetically accessible forms characterizing most of the first words produced. Such forms include particular phonotactic shapes or prosodies (CVCV, VCV, or in some cases CVC); forms with a limited range of onset consonant types (stops, nasals, glottals and glides); forms with only a single consonant type; forms including only low or front vowels, especially in the first syllable; and forms involving associated CV sequences, such as labial þ a or schwa, alveolar þ front vowel, velar þ back vowel (Davis and MacNeilage 1990.…”

Context Conditioned Error Patterns in Disordered Systems

“…Our review in this section of context-conditioned errors in normal development appears to show that variation in the set of basic frames is possible, even within a single language. Davis and MacNeilage (1990) report, in a single case study investigating vowel acquisition (age 1 year, 2 months to 1 year, 8 months) that, almost without exception, highfront vowels occurred in the context of alveolars while highback vowels occurred in velar contexts. Midcentral and lowcentral vowels tended to co-occur with labial consonants.…”

“…Labials are compatible with back rounded vowels insofar as they share their specification for labiality. The co-occurrence of labials and mid or low central vowels noted by Davis and MacNeilage (1990) can also be attributed to greater articulatory compatibility between consonant and vowel gestures, in this case, with respect to jaw position since this may be lower at closure for labial than for lingual consonants (Sussman, MacNeilage, andHanson, 1973, cited in MacNeilage, 1998).…”