Hostname: page-component-669899f699-cf6xr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T16:16:58.835Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A metrical template account of children's weak syllable omissions from multisyllabic words*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Louann Gerken
Louann Gerken*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
*
Department of Psychology, Park Hall, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. Email: psygerkn@ubvms.bitnet.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Young children learning English as well as many other languages frequently omit weakly stressed syllables from multisyllabic words. In particular, they are more likely to omit weak syllables from word-initial positions than from word-internal or -final positions. For example, the weak syllable of a weak-strong (WS) word like giraffe is much more likely to be omitted than the weak syllable of a SW word like tiger. Three hypotheses for this omission pattern have been offered. In two, children's weak syllable omissions reflect innate perceptual biases either to ignore initial weak syllables or to encode word-final syllables. In contrast, the SW Production Template Hypothesis states that children have a template for producing a strong syllable followed by an optional weak syllable. When they apply a series of SW templates to their intended utterances, weak syllables that do not fit the templates are more likely to be omitted than those that do. To compare the three hypotheses, young two-year-olds were asked to say four-syllable SWWS and WSWS nonsense words. Children's pattern of weak syllable preservations was highly consistent with the SW production template hypothesis, but not with the perception-based hypotheses. Implications of this research for children's function morpheme omissions and for the relation of metrical and segmental production templates are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 565 - 584
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

[*]

Thanks to Tom Bever, Peter Jusczyk, Elissa Newport and Alice Turk who provided helpful feedback on earlier versions of the paper. Thanks to Karen Angyal, Mary Boyle, Kimberly Clor, Michele Glaser, Dayana Jimenez, Deborah Rott and Michele Shady for data collection. Thanks also to the parents and children who participated in the research. Research and manuscript preparation were supported by SUNY at Buffalo Research Development Funds and NSF grant No. BNS9120952.

References

REFERENCES

Allen, G. & Hawkins, S. (1980). Phonological rhythm: definition and development. In Yeni-Komshian, G. H., Kavanagh, J. F. & Ferguson, G. A. (eds), Child phonology. Vol. I: Production. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A. (1990). Exploiting prosodic probabilities in speech segmentation. In Altmann, G. (ed.), Computational and psychological approaches to language processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. & Butterfield, S. (1992). Rhythmic cues to speech segmentation: evidence from juncture misperception. Journal of Memory and Language 3, 218–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A. & Carter, D. M. (1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language 2, 133–42.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 14, 113–21.Google Scholar
Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading activation model of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283–321.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1992). Competence or performance? What phonology shows about children's emerging syntax. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1994). On the underspecification of functional categories in early grammars. In Lust, B. (ed.), Syntactic theory and first language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Echols, C. H. (1993). A perceptually-based model of children's earliest productions. Cognition 46, 245–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Echols, C. H. & Newport, E. L. (1992). The role of stress and position in determining first words. Language Acquisition 2, 189–220.Google Scholar
Fallows, D. (1981). Experimental evidence for English syllabification and syllable structure. Journal of Linguistics 17, 309–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1991). Child phonology from a theoretical perspective. Paper presented at OTS Linguistics Colloquium,November 22.Google Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1993). The acquisition of Dutch stress. In Verrips, M. & Wijnen, F. (eds), Amsterdam series in child language development. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press.Google Scholar
Garnes, S. & Bond, Z. S. (1975). Slips of the ear: errors in the perception of casual speech. Proceedings of the Elventh Regional Meeting, CLS, 214–25.Google Scholar
Garnes, S. & Bond, Z. S. (1980). A slip of the ear? A snip of the ear? A slip of the year? In Fromkin, V. A. (ed.), Errors in linguistic performance: slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Garret, M. F. (1975). The analysis of sentence production. In Bower, G. (ed.), Psychology of learning and motivation. Vol. 9. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1987 a). Function morphemes in young children's speech perception and production. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1987 b). Telegraphic speaking does not imply telegraphic listening. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 26, 48–55.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1990 a). A metrical account of subjectless sentences. North East Linguistic Society 20, 121–34.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1990 b). Do adults and children have different feet? Chicago Linguistics Society 26, 116–28.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1990 c). Performance constraints in early child language: the case of subjectless sentences. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 29, 54–61.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1991). The metrical basis for children's subjectless sentences. Journal of Memory and Language 30, 431–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1994). Young children's representation of prosodic phonology: evidence from English-speakers' weak syllable omissions. Journal of Memory and Language (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerken, L. A., Landau, B. & Remez, R. E. (1990). Function morphemes in young children's speech perception and production. Developmental Psychology 27, 204–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerken, L. A. & McIntosh, B. J. (1993). The interplay of function morphemes and prosody in early language. Developmental Psychology 29, 448–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L., Gleitman, H., Landau, B. & Wanner, E. (1988). Where learning begins, initial representations for language learning. In Newmeyer, F. (ed.), The Cambridge linguisic survey. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. & Wanner, E. (1982). The state of the state of the art. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. (eds), Language acquisition: the state of the art. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Hayes, B. (1982). Extrametricality and English stress. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 227–76.Google Scholar
Hooper, J. (1976). Introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1974). Phonological rules in young children. Journal of Child Language 1, 49–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A. & Redanz, L. (1994). Infants' sensitivity to predominant word stress patterns in English. Child Development (in press).Google Scholar
Kahn, D. (1976). Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Unpublished PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Klein, H. B. (1978). The relationship between perceptual strategies and production strategies in learning the phonology of early lexical items. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Liberman, M. & Prince, A. (1977). On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 2, 249–336.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K. (1980). The emergence of the sounds of speech in infancy. In Yeni-Komshian, G. H., Kavanagh, J. F. & Ferguson, G. A. (eds), Child phonology. Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Peters, A. (1985). Language segmentation: operating principles for the perception and analysis of language. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 2: Theoretical issues, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Peters, A. (1992). Language typology, individual differences and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 3. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Pye, C. (1983). Mayan telegraphese. Language 59, 583–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, E. O. (1982). The syllable. In van der Hulst, H. & Smith, (eds), The structure of phonological representations. Vol. 1. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the acquisition of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Smith, N. V. (1973). The acquisition of phonology. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, C. & Dunn, C. (1985). Normal and disordered child phonology. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (1980). Sound change and child language. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 14, 304–20.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. & Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: initial capabilities and developmental change. Developmental Psychology 24, 672–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 7, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wijnen, F. (1988). Spontaneous word fragmentation in children: evidence for the syllable as a unit in speech production. Journal of Phonetics 16, 187–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wijnen, F., Krikhaar, E. & den Os, E. (1994). The (non)realization of unstressed elements in children's utterances: evidence for a rhythmic constraint'. Journal of Child Language 21, 59–83.Google Scholar