The (non)realization of unstressed elements in children's utterances: evidence for a rhythmic constraint

Abstract

In this study it is argued that the omission of closed class morphemes and of unstressed syllables within words is related to their common characteristic, viz. that they are unstressed, rhythmically weak parts of utterances. Several strands of evidence indicate that it is unlikely that children are unable to perceive these elements in the input speech. The pattern of (non)realization of unstressed syllables within content words and the class of determiners, was analysed in two Dutch children from 1;6 to 2;11. It appeared that polysyllabic words were quite generally truncated in such a way that they fitted a trochaic (strong-weak) pattern, particularly in the early samples. Some observations with respect to the (non)realization of determiners are suggestive of an influence of an SW-constraint on the realization of noun phrases. These findings support the hypothesis that in the course of utterance preparation, words and phrases are mapped onto S(W) templates. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dissolution of the SW-constraint coincides with the acquisition of specific aspects of stress assignment in Dutch, such as quantity sensitivity.

Effecten van SLI op Nederlandse congruentie

“…Tabel 11 geeft een overzicht van het correcte gebruik van de en het in de drie onderscheiden groepen; omdat het weglaten van lidwoorden typerend is voor de (vroege) taalontwikkeling (vgl. Bol & Kuiken 1988, Wijnen, Krikhaar & den Os 1994, Rozendaal & Baker 2008) en we willen weten in welk stadium de SLI-kinderen zitten, is ook deze responsmogelijkheid opgenomen (anders dan bijv. in tabel 6, waar alleen de aard van overgeneralisaties centraal stond).…”

Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language acquisition

“…In Dutch, proto-determiners seem to appear around the age of 2;0 and are phonetically realized as a schwa (e.g. Bol and Kuiken, 1990;Wijnen et al, 1994;Rozendaal and Baker, to appear). Between ages 2;0 and 3;0, children begin to produce the full form of determiners with a higher frequency.…”

Bridging the gap between receptive and productive development with minimally violable constraints

“…In production, children learning English, as well as the prosodically similar Dutch, often go through a stage in which words are limited in size to a single initially stressed disyllable, that is, a trochaic foot (Smith 1973, Ingram 1974, Allen and Hawkins 1978, Echols and Newport 1992, Fee 1992, Fikkert 1994, Gerken 1994, Wijnen et al 1994, Demuth 1995, Pater 1997). This stage is illustrated in the following data from Trevor (Compton andStreeter 1977, Pater 1997), in which initially stressed disyllables are produced intact, while finally stressed disyllables lose their stressless initial syllable (Trevor was learning American English, which has retained gallic final stress in garage):…”