FIRST AND SECOND GRADERS, GIVEN "CVC" SINGULAR NONSENSE WORDS (E.G., NAR) ORALLY AND ASKED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO PLURALS (NARF-NARK), PREFERRED FINAL SOUNDS SHARING WITH /Z/ (THE MOST COMMON SHAPE OF THE PLURAL MORPHEME IN ENGLISH) THE STRIDENCY OR CONTINUANCE FEATURES. THIS SUGGESTS THAT THEIR PLURALIZATION RULES ARE FORMULATED IN TERMS OF…

Examination of the phonological acquisition of a young girl whose parents spoke two Cantonese dialects indicated that she acquired neither parents' dialect, supporting the claim that children use all available input in acquiring language rather than limiting themselves to a primary language model. (Author/CB)

Analysis of the distributional properties of non-syllabic vowels within word boundaries in Italian demonstrates: the role of phonological constraints on the distribution of non-syllabic words; the syllabification possibilities within each type of sequence by setting up a structural model; and the phonemic occurrences in vowel sequences collected…

Investigation of native Chinese speakers' acquisition of French suprasegmental features found that the subjects not only perceived the different directions of pitch but also placed them in the right categories, in spite of the differences between the use of pitch in tonal and intonational languages. (34 references) (CB)

This paper presents a diachronic phonological analysis of French in order to show that Kiparsky's (1972) argument against formal (or language-specific) notation is based on a small sample of phenomena and is therefore not valid. Examples of vocalic tension in French are given, and the process from tension to relaxation is described. This tension…

Previous studies have defined the earliest stage of child language to be the stage at which an uninitiated speaker of adult language can understand sentences spoken by the child. Upon the examination of the language of one child, aged 1 year and 7 months, it became evident that she could talk, even though it was equally evident that she didn't use…

Examines the relationship between phonetic substitution patterns in child speech and sound change patterns in dialects of adult language, basing an explanation of these phenomena on acoustic data and language universals. (AM)

The phonologies of three English-speaking children at approximately two years of age are examined. Two of the analyses are based on published studies; the third is based on observations and recordings made by the author. Summary statements on phonemic inventories and on correspondences with the adult model are presented. For the third case, fairly…

The pronunciations of children do not merely represent accidental misses with respect to adult pronunciation. Children employ substitutions and deletions in highly systematic ways; child pronunciations reflect a set of simplification strategies. The major common processes of both normal and abnormal child phonology result in simplification of…

Uses eight languages in five distinct linguistic areas to examine two hypotheses regarding text generation and analysis and to illustrate their reciprocity relative to narrative discourse. Demonstrates how these hypotheses yield salience schemes and constituent analysis which mutually corroborate and correct each other. (KEH)

Foreign Workers' German (FWG) refers to the acquired German language skills of workers from various countries who were recruited to West Germany between 1955 and 1973 to fill menial, undesirable jobs. Contact between these workers and native German speakers was limited because of the nature of the foreigners' work, the tendency toward residential…

THIS PAPER PRESENTS FIRST A SUMMARY OF RESEARCH INVESTIGATING THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE KINDERGARTEN CHILD HAS ABSTRACTED IMPLICIT REGULARITIES IN THE FORMATION OF PLURALS IN ENGLISH. PRODUCTION AND RECOGNITION TASKS WERE USED. THE CHILDREN MADE MORE ERRORS WITH SYLLABLES REQUIRING THE ADDITION OR DELETION OF THE /IZ/ ALLOMORPH THAN WITH SYLLABLES…

This paper examines the problem of whether tonal representation should be considered segmental or suprasegmental. Woo's hypothesis that tone features are to be specified segmentally is discussed as well as Leben's statement that in some languages tone is suprasegmental. The following are criteria suggested as a basis for tonal representation:…

This study, the ninth in the series "Studies in the Phonology of Asian Languages," aims to analyze the phonological properties of the accentual system of Standard Colloquial Japanese on the basis of acoustic-phonetic data, especially data obtained through use of the sound spectrograph and pitch extractor. Chapters deal with functional distinctions…

Analysis of the babbling of five infants indicated that between 14 and 40 percent of utterances recurred in particular contexts with a greater than expected frequency, suggesting that babbling is not entirely random but contains consistent sound-meaning relationships that are not adult-modeled. (Author/CB)