The Acquisition of Syllable Types

Levelt, Clara C.; Schiller, Niels O.; Levelt, Willem J. M.

doi:10.1207/s15327817la0803_2

Cited by 190 publications

(222 citation statements)

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“…In early language productions, the first syllables are of the consonant -vowel type, which is common across different languages. Subsequent development of novel syllable types is influenced by frequency of occurrence and may therefore also be experience-dependent [43]. Although there is a clear parallel, the distinction between more and less common elements is somewhat different from that between universal and non-universal speech sounds in humans.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The interplay of within-species perceptual predispositions and experience during song ontogeny in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata)

et al. 2014

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Vocal acquisition in songbirds and humans shows many similarities, one of which is that both involve a combination of experience and perceptual predispositions. Among languages some speech sounds are shared, while others are not. This could reflect a predisposition in young infants for learning some speech sounds over others, which combines with exposure-based learning. Similarly, in songbirds, some sounds are common across populations, while others are more specific to populations or individuals. We examine whether this is also due to perceptual preferences for certain within-species element types in naive juvenile male birds, and how such preferences interact with exposure to guide subsequent song learning. We show that young zebra finches lacking previous song exposure perceptually prefer songs with more common zebra finch song element types over songs with less common elements. Next, we demonstrate that after subsequent tutoring, birds prefer tutor songs regardless of whether these contain more common or less common elements. In adulthood, birds tutored with more common elements showed a higher song similarity to their tutor song, indicating that the early bias influenced song learning. Our findings help to understand the maintenance of similarities and the presence of differences among birds' songs, their dialects and human languages.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The interplay of within-species perceptual predispositions and experience during song ontogeny in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata)

et al. 2014

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“…In this section we review some of these studies, identify some of the factors that may have influenced their results, and discuss the implications for understanding of the development of clusters in French. Levelt et al (2000) examined the acquisition of syllable structures in a longitudinal study of twelve Dutch-speaking children (1;0-1 ;11 at the outset of the study). They found that the order of acquisition closely matched the frequency with which those syllable structures occurred in child-directed speech.…”

Section: T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F W O R D-i N I T I a L V E R mentioning

confidence: 99%

The longitudinal development of clusters in French

Demuth

McCullough

2008

J. Child Lang.

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A B S T R A C TStudies of English and German find that children tend to acquire word-final consonant clusters before word-initial consonant clusters. This order of acquisition is generally attributed to articulatory, frequency and/or morphological factors. This contrasts with recent experimental findings from French, where two-year-olds were better at producing word-initial than word-final clusters (Demuth & Kehoe, 2006). The purpose of the present study was to examine Frenchspeaking children's longitudinal acquisition of clusters to determine if these results replicate developmentally. Analysis of spontaneous speech productions from two French-speaking children between one and three years confirmed the earlier acquisition of initial clusters, even when sonority factors were controlled. The findings suggest that French-speaking children acquire complexity at the beginnings of words before complexity appears word-finally. The role of frequency, morphological, structural and input factors is discussed. I N T R O D U C T I O NMuch of the research on the children's acquisition of consonant clusters has focused on word-initial position in English (e.g. Templin, 1957 ; see Kirk & Demuth (2005) for review). In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to children's developing abilities with word-final clusters. Studies that have addressed this issue report that in German and English, wordfinal clusters are typically produced before word-initial clusters (e.g.[*] We thank Harriet Jisa and other members of Dynamique du

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“…Reranking will stop when the outputs of the developing grammar and those of the target adult grammar are identical. A couple of studies have shown that developmental stages can indeed be captured by positing successive grammars in which the relative rankings of markedness and faithfulness constraints change from M >> F to, eventually, F >> M. We will illustrate development as reranking with work by Levelt, Schiller & Levelt (2000), Ota (1999) andPater (1997).…”

Section: Development = Rerankingmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…By now, OT accounts have been presented for virtually every aspect of child phonology: sound substitutions and segmental development (Adam 2003;Dinnsen & McGarrity 1999;Dinnsen, O'Connor & Gierut 2001;Gilbers 2001;Gilbers & Van der Linde 1999;Joppen & Grijzenhout 2000;Inkelas & Rose 2003), prosodic structure, truncations, stress (Adam 2003;Demuth 1995aDemuth , 1995bDemuth , 1996Lleó & Demuth 1999;Pater 1997;Ota 1999), cluster reduction (see references in §2.2.1), syllable structure (Joppen & Grijzenhout 1999;Levelt, Schiller & Levelt 2000;Levelt & Van de Vijver, to appear), consonant harmony (see references in §2.3), variation (Adam 2003;Dinnsen & McGarrity 1999;Gierut, Morrisette & Champion 1999;Pater & Werle 2001), the interaction between phonology and morphology (Adam 2003;Lléo 2001;Lléo & Demuth 1999), everything (Bernhardt & Stemberger 1998). However, rather than presenting a complete overview of OT acquisition research, we choose to focus on two important OT-based statements concerning acquisition.…”

Section: Optimality Theory and Acquisition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%