Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-77pjf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-09T17:21:52.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Acquisition of variability in Akan Phonology: Labio-palatalized consonants and front rounded vowels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2021

Wendy Kwakye AMOAKO
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
Joseph Paul STEMBERGER*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
*
*Corresponding author: E-mail: Joseph.Stemberger@ubc.ca

Abstract

This paper addresses how input variability in the adult phonological system is mastered in the output of young children in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, involving variability between labio-palatalized consonants and front rounded vowels. The high-frequency variant involves a complex consonant which is expected to be mastered late, while the low-frequency variant involves a front rounded vowel which is expected to be mastered relatively early. Late mastery of complex consonants was confirmed. The high-frequency labiopalatalized-consonant variant was absent at age 3 and not yet mastered even at age 5. All children produced the easier-to-produce low-frequency front-rounded-vowel variant, most at far greater frequency than in adult speech, implying that a child's output limitations can affect which variant the child targets for production. Modular theories, in which phonological plans reflect only the characteristics of adult input, fail to account for our results. Non-modular theories are implicated.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

References

Abakah, E. N. (2004). Where have all the consonantal phonemes of Akan gone? Journal of philosophy and culture, 1(2), 2148.Google Scholar
Abakah, E. N. (2012). Some assimilatory processes in Akan. Journal of West African Languages, 39(2), 4782.Google Scholar
Abakah, E. N. (2016). Hypotheses on the diachronic development of the Akan language group. Journal of Universal Language, 17(1), 151. DOI: 10.22425/jul.2016.17.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., Kidd, E., Rowland, C. F., & Theakston, A. L. (2015). The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 42(2), 239273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Amoako, W. K. (2020). Assessing phonological development among Akan-speaking children (MA thesis, University of British Columbia). Retrieved from <https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0390995>..>Google Scholar
Amoako, W. K., Stemberger, J. P., Bernhardt, B. M., & Tessier, A. (2020). Acquisition of consonants among typically developing Akan-speaking children: a preliminary report. International Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 22(6), 626636. DOI:10.1080/17549507.2020.1825804CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Archer, J., Champion, T., Tyrone, M. E., & Walters, S. (2018). Phonological development of monolingual Haitian Creole–speaking preschool children. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 39(3) 426437. DOI: 10.1177/1525740117729466CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, J. A., & Gierut, J. A. (1999). Optimality Theory in phonological acquisition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42(6), 14821498. https://doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4206.1482CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2010). Generalizing over lexicons to predict consonant mastery. Laboratory Phonology, 1(2), 319343. DOI: 10.1515/LABPHON.2010.017CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beers, M. (1995). The phonology of normally developing and language impaired children. (Studies in language and language use, 20). Amsterdam: IFOTT.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, B. H., & Stemberger, J. P. (1998). Handbook of phonological development: from the perspective of constraint-based nonlinear phonology. San Diego: Academic Press (now published in Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.).Google Scholar
Bernhardt, B. M., & Stemberger, J. P. (2017). Investigating typical and protracted phonological development across languages. In Babatsouli, E., Ingram, D., & Mueller, N. (Eds.), Cross-linguistic encounters in language acquisition: typical and atypical development, (pp. 71108). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhardt, B. M., & Stemberger, J. P. (2018). Tap and trill clusters in typical and protracted phonological development: conclusion. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 32(5–6), 563575. DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2017.1370496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bérubé, D., Bernhardt, B. M., & Stemberger, J. P. (2015). A test of Canadian French phonology: construction and use. Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 39(1), 61100.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Hayes, B. (2001). Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry, 32(1), 4586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2011). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Retrieved from http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2006). Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (2007). Sesotho speech acquisition. In McLeod, S. (Ed.), The International Guide to Speech Acquisition (pp. 528538). Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.Google Scholar
Díaz-Campos, M. (2004). Acquisition of sociolinguistic variables in Spanish: Do children acquire individual lexical forms or variable rules? In Face, T. (Ed.), Laboratory approaches to Spanish phonology (pp. 221236). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dolphyne, F. A. (1988). The Akan (Twi-Fante) language: its sound systems and tonal structure. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.Google Scholar
Fox, A. V. (2006). Evidence from German-speaking children. In Hua, Z. and Dodd, B. (Eds.), Phonological development and disorders in children: a multilingual perspective (pp. 5680). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J. H. (1965). Some generalizations concerning initial and final consonant sequences. Linguistics, 3(18), 534. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1965.3.18.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisch, S. A. (2018). Exemplar theories in phonology. In Hannahs, S.J. and Bosch, A. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory (pp. 553568). London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hale, M., & Reiss, C. (1998). Formal and empirical arguments concerning phonological acquisition. Linguistic Inquiry, 29(4), 656683. DOI: 10.1162/002438998553914CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, J. H. (1996). A Study of the stages of development and acquisition of Mandarin Chinese by children in Taiwan. Taipei, Taiwan: Crane Pub.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1988). The acquisition of word-initial [v]. Language and Speech, 31(1), 7785.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1968/1941). Child Language, aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton. (Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, P., & Maddieson, I. (2007). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leiwo, M., Kulju, P., & Aoyama, K. (2006). The acquisition of Finnish vowel harmony. In Suominen, M., Arppe, A., Airola, A., Heinämäki, O., Miestamo, M., Määttä, U., Niemi, J., Pitkänen, K. K., & Sinnemäki, K. (Eds.), A Man of Measure: Festschrift in Honour of Fred Karlsson (pp. 149–161). A special supplement to SKY Journal of Linguistics, 19.Google Scholar
Lundeborg Hammarström, I. (2019). Manual till LINUS 2.0. University of Linköping: Department of Logopedia. http://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/linus-2-0-manual-2019_lundeborg_sep-19/Google Scholar
MacLeod, A. A. N., Sutton, A., Trudeau, N., & Thordardottir, E. (2011). The acquisition of consonants in Québécois French: A cross-sectional study of pre-school aged children. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 13(2), 93109. DOI: 10.3109/17549507.2011.487543CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maddieson, I. (1980). Vocoid approximants in the world's languages. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 50, 113120.Google Scholar
Maddieson, I. (1984). Patterns of Sound. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahura, O. O., & Pascoe, M. (2016). The acquisition of Setswana segmental phonology in children aged 3.0–6.0 years: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(6), 533549. DOI: 10.3109/17549507.2015.1126639CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAllister Byun, T., & Tessier, A.-M. (2016). Motor influences on grammar in an emergentist model of phonology. Language and Linguistics Compass, 10(9), 431452. DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12205CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nardy, A., Chevrot, J.-P., & Barbu, S. (2013). The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation: Looking back and thinking ahead. Linguistics, 51(2), 255284. DOI: 10.1515/ling-2013-001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nwokah, E. E. (1986). Consonantal substitution patterns in Igbo phonological acquisition. Language and Speech, 29(2), 159176. DOI: 10.1177/002383098602900204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. (2001). Exemplar dynamics: word frequency, lenition, and contrast. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (Eds.), Frequency effects and the emergence of lexical structure (pp. 137157). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, A., & Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pye, C., Ingram, D., & List, H. (1987). A comparison of initial consonant acquisition in English and Quiché. In Nelson, K. and van Kleeck, A. (Eds.), Children's Language, Vol. 6 (pp. 175190). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. (1997). Acquisition of variable rules: a study of (-t, d) deletion in preschool children. Journal of Child Language, 24(2), 351375. DOI: 10.1017/S0305000997003073CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schachter, P., & Fromkin, V. (1968). A Phonology of Akan. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, whole no. 9. UCLA: Department of Linguistics. URL: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fn134hvGoogle Scholar
Shriberg, L. D. (1993). Four new speech and prosody-voice measures for genetics research and other studies in developmental phonological disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 36(1): 105–40. doi:10.1044/jshr.3601.105CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, J., Durham, M., & Richards, H. (2013). The social and linguistic in the acquisition of sociolinguistic norms: caregivers, children and variation. Linguistics, 51(2): 285324. DOI: 10.1515/ling-2013–0012CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, N. (1973). The acquisition of phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sosa, A. V., & Bybee, J. L. (2008). A cognitive approach to clinical phonology. In Ball, M., Perkins, M., Muller, N., & Howard, S. (Eds.), Handbook of clinical linguistics (pp. 480490). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stemberger, J. P., & Chávez-Peón, M. (2014). Overgeneralization in the processing of complex forms in Valley Zapotec child language. Mental Lexicon, 9(1), 107130. DOI: 10.1075/ml.9.1.05ste.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stemberger, J. P., & Chávez-Peón, M. (2018). Development of variability of lenis stops in Valley Zapotec. In Rojas, C. (Ed.) Diferencias individuales en la adquisición del lenguaje. Mexico: IIFL-UNAM.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, C., & Dunn, C. (1985). Normal and abnormal phonology in children. Austin Texas: Pro-Ed. Inc.Google Scholar
Tessier, A. M. (2016). Phonological acquisition: child language and constraint-based grammar. Macmillan Education, Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zajdó, K., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (2003). The acquisition of vowels in Hungarian: Developmental data. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 22292232). Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar