This paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt...Show moreThis paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt et al., a couple of hypotheses regarding German syllable type acquisition were formulated. Since German does not have onsetless syllables, the syllable types V, VC, and VCC were not expected to appear in child language. The German data for this study consisted of recordings of four German children between the ages 1;00 and 2;00. The data was searched for different syllable types at different stages of acquisition. Unexpectedly, onsetless syllables did appear in the recordings. However, additional analysis showed that they appear unsystematically and are thus likely produced due to a phonetic or articulatory error and do not emerge from underlying grammar. Therefore, onsetless syllables were disregarded, in the order of acquisition. All children showed the same order of acquisition for the rest of the syllable types. The acquisitional order of the syllable types was accounted for by an OT analysis in which each new syllable type emerges from a reranking of constraints in the underlying grammar. The most prominent difference to the Dutch OT grammar is that in German grammar ONSET remains high ranked and does not get outranked by FAITH.Show less
This paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt...Show moreThis paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt et al., a couple of hypotheses regarding German syllable type acquisition were formulated. Since German does not have onsetless syllables, the syllable types V, VC, and VCC were not expected to appear in child language. The German data for this study consisted of recordings of four German children between the ages 1;00 and 2;00. The data was searched for different syllable types at different stages of acquisition. Unexpectedly, onsetless syllables did appear in the recordings. However, additional analysis showed that they appear unsystematically and are thus likely produced due to a phonetic or articulatory error and do not emerge from underlying grammar. Therefore, onsetless syllables were disregarded, in the order of acquisition. All children showed the same order of acquisition for the rest of the syllable types. The acquisitional order of the syllable types was accounted for by an OT analysis in which each new syllable type emerges from a reranking of constraints in the underlying grammar. The most prominent difference to the Dutch OT grammar is that in German grammar ONSET remains high ranked and does not get outranked by FAITH.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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Optimality Theory has been the dominating theoretical framework in phonology. Experimental research has found supporting evidence for the psychological reality of its parameters. This study...Show moreOptimality Theory has been the dominating theoretical framework in phonology. Experimental research has found supporting evidence for the psychological reality of its parameters. This study proposes a combination of an artificial grammar learning task and a grammaticality judgement task to explore the mental representation of the constraint hierarchy in more detail. 19 Native Dutch speakers participated in this study, of which two were excluded. During the artificial grammar learning task participants implicitly learned a grammar. The stimuli were constructed using an OT-analysis of reduplication. During the GJT task, participants were asked to rate non-optimal and optimal candidates. By looking at the gradient judgement of the candidates, the learned constraint hierarchy can be analysed. After further investigation, a correction on the constructed OT-analysis was necessary. The reanalysed data revealed a relation between the responses and the simplified strata hierarchy. This relation showed similarities to the previously researched acquisition of initial state grammar. A multitude of challenges had to be overcome during the completion of this experiment. These challenges might contribute to the development of a well-defined methodology to further explore the psychological reality of OT.Show less
