The role of phonological context in children’s overt marking of ‘-s’ in two dialects 
of American English

Influences of Phonological Context on Tense Marking in Spanish–English Dual Language Learners

“…In a more direct examination of preceding phonological context in mainstream monolingual English-speaking children, Song et al (2009) identified higher 3s marking rates in preceding-vowel contexts. On the converse, Barlow and Pruitt-Lord (2014) examined a cross-section from the same corpus used in the longitudinal study of Song et al and found 3s marking rates to be lower in preceding-vowel contexts. These later findings are unexpected, not only because they differ from a study sampling the same population, but also because they appear contrary to patterns that are expected on the basis of word-final phonological complexity.…”

“…These studies failed to identify an effect of following context (consonant vs. vowel) for plural -s; however, in comparing 3s and plural -s marking rates, the effect of a following vowel was shown to be contrastive. To be specific, 3s marking rate increased when followed by a vowel, yet plural -s marking rate decreased in the same context (Barlow & Pruitt-Lord, 2014), suggesting that the influence of following context might differ for 3s and plural -s. It is curious that no published studies of following context are available for PT. Nevertheless, given that PT is also likely subject to resyllabification processes, it would be appropriate to expand examination of its phonological context to the following environment as well.…”

“…To date, multiple factors related to the context in which the morpheme occurs have been shown to influence emerging PT and 3s marking rates. These include nonlinguistic influences, such as task type (Barlow, Pruitt-Lord, & Combiths, 2015;Oetting et al, 2012); supralexical linguistic influences, such as utterance position (Barlow & Pruitt-Lord, 2014;Dalal & Loeb, 2005;Song, Sundara, & Demuth, 2009;Sundara, Demuth, & Kuhl, 2011); and lexical influences, such as the frequency with which verbs are inflected for tense marking (Blom & Paradis, 2013;Blom, Paradis, & Duncan, 2012;Marchman, 1997;Marchman, Wulfeck, & Weismer, 1999;Oetting & Horohov, 1997).…”

“…There is precedent for the influence of phonology-particularly of the preceding segment in the verb stem-on morpheme marking in acquisition and dialect patterns. Phonological context has been shown to affect regular PT and 3s marking rates across studies of groups both with and without impairment, spanning linguistic populations and task types (e.g., Barlow & Pruitt-Lord, 2014;Johnson & Morris, 2007). However, indices used to measure phonological-context effects have been inconsistent, and findings even appear contradictory in some cases.…”

“…Some studies have examined the role of following phonological context on morpheme marking rate (plural -s: Barlow & Pruitt-Lord, 2014;Polite, 2011;3s: Barlow & Pruitt-Lord, 2014). These studies failed to identify an effect of following context (consonant vs. vowel) for plural -s; however, in comparing 3s and plural -s marking rates, the effect of a following vowel was shown to be contrastive.…”