Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7tmb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T00:00:41.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Frank Wijnen ,
Evelien Krikhaar  and
Els Den Os
Frank Wijnen*
Affiliation:
University of Utrecht
Evelien Krikhaar
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
Els Den Os
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics & Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK, Groningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: wijnen@let.rug.nl.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 59 - 83
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

[*]

We thank our subjects and their parents for their patient co-operation. Thanks are also due to Tirtsa Huiskamp, for her assistance in judging stress patterns, and to Loekie Elbers, René Kager, Sarah Hawkins, and an anonymous reviewer, for their thoughtful and stimulating comments on earlier versions of this paper. Els den Os and Frank Wijnen were supported by grants from the PSYCHON foundation, which is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

References

REFERENCES

Allen, G. D. & Hawkins, S. (1978). The development of phonological rhythm. In Bell, A. & Hooper, J. B. (eds). Syllables and segments. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Allen, G. D. & Hawkins, S. (1980). Phonological rhythm: definition and development. In Yeni-Komshian, G. H., Kavanagh, J. F. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds). Child Phonology: Vol. I. Production, New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H. & Clark, E. V. (1977). Psychology and language: an introduction to psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. & Carter, D. M. (1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language 2, 133–42.CrossRefGoogle 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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demuth, K. (1992). On the ‘underspecification’ of functional categories in early grammars. In Lust, B. (ed.), Syntactic theory and first language acquisition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Den Os, E. (1990 a). The development of prosody. Poster presented at the Fifth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Budapest, July.Google Scholar
Den Os, E. (1990 b). Development of temporal properties in the speech of one child between one and three years of age. Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 14, 39–52.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. E. & Kaye, J. D. (1990). A computational learning model for metrical phonology. Cognition 34, 137–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fee, E. J. (1991). Segments and syllables in early language acquisition. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Acquisition, October.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. & Farwell, C. B. (1975). Words and sounds in early language acquisition. Language 51, 419–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1991). Child phonology from a theoretical perspective. Paper presented to the OTS Linguistics Colloquium, November.Google Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1993). The acquisition of Dutch stress. In M. Verrips & F. Wijnen (eds), Amsterdam Series in Child Language Development, Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A. (1990). Performance constraints in early language: the case of subjectless sentences. Papers and Reports in 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. (1992). Young children's representations of prosodie phonology; evidence from English-speakers' weak syllable omissions. Unpublished paper, State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar
Gerken, L. A., Landau, B. & Remez, R. E. (1990). Function morphemes in young children's speech perception and production. Developmental Psychology 26, 204–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L. R., Gleitman, H., Landau, B. & Wanner, E. (1988). Where learning begins: initial representations for language learning. In Newmeyer, F. J. (ed.), Linguistics: the Cambridge survey. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Hochberg, J. G. (1988). First steps in the acquisition of Spanish stress. Journal of Child Language 15, 273–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyams, N. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kager, R. W. J. (1989). A metrical theory of stress and destressing in Dutch. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Kelly, M. H. & Bock, J. K. (1988). Stress in time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 14, 389–403.Google ScholarPubMed
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: from intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lohuis-Weber, H. (1991). Kinder-Stress: een onderzoek naar de rol van klemtoon bij moedertaalverwerving. Unpublished M. A. Thesis, University of Utrecht, Dept. of Dutch Language and Literature.Google Scholar
Menyuk, P., Menn, L. & Silber, R. (1986). Early strategies for the perception and production of words and sounds. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition (2nd ed.). Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Petretic, P. A. & Tweney, R. D. (1977). Does comprehension precede production? The development of children's responses to telegraphic sentences of varying grammatical adequacy. Journal of Child Language 4, 201–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pye, C. (1983). Mayan telegraphese: intonational determinants of inflectional development in Quiché Mayan. Language 59, 583–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quené, H. (1992). Integration of acoustic-phonetic cues in word segmentation. In: Schouten, M. E. H. (ed), The auditory processing of speech: from sounds to words. Berlin: Mouton-De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Shipley, E. F., Smith, C. S. & Gleitman, L. R. (1969). A study in the acquisition of language: free responses to commands. Language 45, 322–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schwartz, R. G. (1988). Phonological factors in early lexical acquisition. In Smith, M. D. and Locke, J. L. (eds), The emergent lexicon: the child's development of a linguistic vocabulary. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Waterson, N. (1971). Child phonology: a prosodic view. Journal of Linguistics 7, 179–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wijnen, F. (1990). The development of sentence planning. Journal of Child Language 17, 651–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wijnen, F. (1992). Incidental word and sound errors in young speakers. Journal of Memory and Language 31, 734–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar