Acquisition of L1 Phonology in the Romance Languages

Abstract

The field of study on the acquisition of phonological productive abilities by first-language learners in the Romance languages has been largely focused on three main languages: French, Portuguese, and Spanish, including various dialects of these languages spoken in Europe as well as in the Americas. In this article, we provide a comparative survey of this literature, with an emphasis on representational phonology. We also include in our discussion observations from the development of Catalan and Italian, and mention areas where these languages, as well as Romanian, another major Romance language, would provide welcome additions to our cross-linguistic comparisons. Together, the various studies we summarize reveal intricate patterns of development, in particular concerning the acquisition of consonants across different positions within the syllable, the word, and in relation to stress, documented from both monolingual and bilingual first-language learners can be found. The patterns observed across the different languages and dialects can generally be traced to formal properties of phone distributions, as entailed by mainstream theories of phonological representation, with variations also predicted by more functional aspects of speech, including phonetic factors and usage frequency. These results call for further empirical studies of phonological development, in particular concerning Romanian, in addition to Catalan and Italian, whose phonological and phonetic properties offer compelling grounds for the formulation and testing of models of phonology and phonological development.

Revisiting the Acquisition of Onset Complexity: Affrication in Québec French

“…Rose (2000) analyzed longitudinal data from two QF-speaking children (Clara and Théo; see the Method section) and concluded that, with regard to onset complexity, children acquire branching onsets in stressed syllables first. Even though the existence of word-level stress in QF is disputed (see e.g., Walker, 1984; Thibault & Ouellet, 1996), with stress in adult QF being required only at the right edge of the phonological phrase (PPh; see (1)), children acquiring QF tend to consistently produce stress word-finally (Rose, 2000; Goad & Buckley, 2006). Branching onsets are thus acquired in word-final syllables and stressed monosyllables first (2), and later in unstressed positions (3).…”

“…The criterion for accuracy count in Rose (2000) is different from the one used in MacLeod et al (2011): in Rose (2000), all items that exhibit possible onset clusters in QF are classified as accurate productions, including cases where one of the segments in the cluster is not quite target-like (e.g., Théo's production of trouvé in (3)). Although not quite target-like at the segmental level, these productions provide evidence that the children have acquired onset complexity.…”

“…As Clara's and Théo's productions are also the object of the present study, the question that arises is whether they acquire affrication before branching onsets. Rose (2000) points out that many branching onsets produced by Théo exhibit dorsal assimilation (see trouvé in (3)), which could be interpreted as an indication that the child is not producing branching onsets at this point, but rather affricates, whose elements share the same place of articulation. Rose (2000) dismisses this possibility based on two observations: (a) some of the clusters that exhibit dorsal assimilation exhibit voicing mismatch underlyingly (e.g., /kʁ/), which is crosslinguistically not observed in affricates, and (b) Théo's affricates ([t͡s,d͡z]) emerge after such clusters.…”

“…Rose (2000) points out that many branching onsets produced by Théo exhibit dorsal assimilation (see trouvé in (3)), which could be interpreted as an indication that the child is not producing branching onsets at this point, but rather affricates, whose elements share the same place of articulation. Rose (2000) dismisses this possibility based on two observations: (a) some of the clusters that exhibit dorsal assimilation exhibit voicing mismatch underlyingly (e.g., /kʁ/), which is crosslinguistically not observed in affricates, and (b) Théo's affricates ([t͡s,d͡z]) emerge after such clusters. However, Rose (2000) does not elaborate on when affricates are in effect acquired by the child relative to branching onsets, and whether affricates precede or follow branching onsets for the other child included in the study.…”

“…Both children were recorded from the period when they were producing their first words; they were recorded regularly for a relatively long period of time (19 months for Clara, 26 months for Théo). Their productions have been the subject of several phonological analyses (Rose, 2000, 2002, 2003; Goad & Buckley, 2006), which provide an extensive picture of their phonological development, allowing the present analysis to place the acquisition of affrication in their developmental timeline. Before turning to the data under analysis, I discuss affrication in QF, as well as the acquisition of affrication, onset structure in QF, and variable phenomena.…”