Vowel context and frequency effects in dorsal and coronal acquisition in Drehu and French
Résumé
Age-typical misarticulations in phonological development that are attested in any given language might be explained by universal "markedness constraints" or by language-specific "phonotactic constraints". The present study examines Drehu (an Austronesian language spoken in New Caledonia) and French developmental data on [k] and [t] in different vowel contexts. The study of growth in accuracy by age for word-initial [k] and [t] in 3 vowel contexts shows that both stops are mastered early in both languages, but [k] is somewhat more accurate for the youngest children. In addition, the difference in accuracy is modulated by vowel context. The greater accuracy of [k] before [u] in Drehu is in keeping with the intrinsic difficulty of producing coronal constrictions before back vowels described in the frame/content account of markedness universals based on the mandibular cycle. The greater accuracy of [k] before [i] in French, on the other hand, is unexpected. The relationship between mean accuracy of [k] or [t] and CV frequencies derived from two corpora of child-directed speech was examined for the youngest children. The otherwise puzzling effects of the front-vowel context on accuracy of [t] seem to reflect the very low frequency of the [ti] sequence in both languages. The relative accuracy of [t] and [k] in development reflects the markedness of particular combinations of lingual stop and coarticulated vowel, as modulated by language-specific phonotactics.
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