Published In

Applied Psycholinguistics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

Subjects

Language and languages, Contrastive linguistics, Indians of North America -- Languages

Abstract

To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition patterns of children in non-Indo-European language environments. In the current study, across- and within-syllable consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns in babbling were analyzed for a 6-month period for seven Ecuadorean Quichua learning children who were between 9 and 17 months of age at study onset. Their babbling utterances were compared to the babbling of six English-learning children between 9 and 22 months of age. Child patterns for both languages were compared with Quichua and English ambient language patterns. Babbling output was highly similar for the child groups: Quichua and English children's babbling demonstrated similar predicted within-syllable (coronal-front vowel, labial-central vowel, dorsal-back vowel) patterns, and across-syllable manner variegation patterns for consonants. These patterns were observed at significantly greater rates in the child groups than in the respective adult language input patterns, suggesting production system influences common to children across languages rather than ambient language perceptual learning effects during these children's babbling period.

Description

This is a copy of an article published in Applied Psycholinguistics © 2013 copyright Cambridge University Press; Applied Psycholinguistics is available online at: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=APS

DOI

10.1017/S0142716411000634

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10400

Download

Share

COinS