Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T11:55:11.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acquisition of variable rules: /s/-lenition in the speech of Chilean Spanish-speaking children and their caregivers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Karen Miller
Karen Miller*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the acquisition of the variable rules constraining Spanish syllable-final /s/-lenition in Chilean Spanish–speaking children, and whether adult-to-adult speech differs from child-directed speech in the production of s-lenition. The data of 10 children (ages 2;04–5;09) and their caregivers is presented. Tokens of syllable final /s/ were coded for pronunciation and a variable-rule analysis examining the effect of various linguistic and extralinguistic constraints was carried out. The results show that child and caregiver use of s-lenition is similar to that found in adult-to-adult speech; however, two of the youngest children showed near-categorical behavior. This paper highlights the important role of caregiver input on acquisition of s-lenition and proposes that production of s-lenition in utterance-final position in the input (caregiver's speech) is linked to young children's acquisition of s-lenition; young children exposed to an input with high rates of [s] in utterance-final position acquire s-lenition earlier.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 311 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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

REFERENCES

Alba, Orlando. (2000). Variación de la /s/ en las noticias de televisión. In Alba, O. (ed.), Nuevos aspectos del español en Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Librería La Trinitaria. 27–48.Google Scholar
Alba, Orlando. (2004). Cómo hablamos los Dominicanos: Un enfoque sociolinguístico. Dominican Republic: Grupo León Jimenes.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2013). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3.39. Available at: http://www.praat.org. Accessed July 5, 2013.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther, & Torres Cacoullos, Rena. (2002). ¿Qué le vamoh aher?: Taking the syllable out of Spanish /s/-reduction. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) 8:17–31.Google Scholar
Cepeda, Gladys. (1995). Retention and deletion of word-final /s/ in Valdivian Spanish (Chile). Hispanic Linguistics 6/ 7:329–353.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. (2010). A subsegmental approach to coda /s/ weakening in Dominican Spanish. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 203:9–26.Google Scholar
Erker, Daniel. (2012). Of categories and continua: Relating discrete and gradient properties of sociophonetic variation. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18:11–20.Google Scholar
Fernald, Anne, & Kuhl, Patricia. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development 10:279–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernald, Anne, & Simon, Thomas. (1984). Expanded intonation contours in mothers' speech to newborns. Developmental Psychology 20:104–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard. (2009). The role of lexical frequency in the weakening of syllable-final /s/ in the Spanish of Barranquilla, Colombia of Barranquilla, Colombia. Hispania 92:348–360.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard, & Brown, Earl. (2010). The gradient nature of s-lenition in Caleño Spanish. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 16:45–55.Google Scholar
File-Muriel, Richard, & Brown, Earl. (2011). The gradient nature of s-lenition in Caleño Spanish. Language Variation & Change 23:223–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, Docherty, Gerard, & Watt, Dominic. (2005). Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language 81:177–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnica, Olga. (1977). Some prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech to young children. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds.), Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 63–88.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory, & Boyd, Sally. (1990). The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change 3:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond, Robert. (1980). Las realizaciones fonéticas del fonema /s/ en el español cubano rápido de Miami. In Scavnicky, G. (ed.), Dialectología hispanoamericana: Estudios actuales. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 8–15.Google Scholar
Hochberg, Judith. (1986). Functional compensation for /s/ deletion in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language 62:609–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Valerie. (2005). Comprehension of third person singular /s/ in AAE-speaking children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 36: 116–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kauschke, Christina, Kurth, Anna, & Domahs, Ulrike. (2011). Acquisition of German noun plurals in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment. Child Development Research 1–17:718925.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. (1982). Explanation in phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovac, Ceil, & Adamson, H. D. (1980). Variation theory and first language acquisition. In Sankoff, D., & Cedergren, H. (eds.), Variation omnibus: Current inquiry into language and linguistics. Alberta: Linguistics Research Inc. 403–410.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1964). Stages in the acquisition of standard English. In Shuy, R. (ed.), Social dialects and language learning. National Council of Teachers of English. 77–103.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change 1(1):85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 2. Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. (1984). On the Weakening of /s/ in Latin American Spanish. Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie und Linguistik 51:31–43.Google Scholar
Lipski, John. (1985). /s/ in Central American Spanish. Hispania 68:143–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipski, John. (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Marrero, Victoria, & Aguirre, Carmen. (2003). Plural acquisition in the development of Spanish. In Montrul, S., & Ordoñez, F. (eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in Hispanic languages: Papers from the 5th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. 275–296.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen. (2007). Variable input and the acquisition of plurality in two varieties of Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen. (2012a). Not all children agree: Acquisition of agreement when the input is variable. Language Learning and Development 8:255–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Karen. (2012b). Sociolinguistic variation in Brown's Sarah Corpus. In Biller, A., Chung, E., & Kimbal, A. (eds.), Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) Proceedings 36. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. 339–348.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen. (in press) Variable input: What Sarah reveals about non-agreeing don't and theories of root infinitives. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Language Development.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen, & Schmitt, Cristina. (2012). Variable input and the acquisition of plural morphology. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Language Development 19:223–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Karen, & Schmitt, Cristina. (2013). Spanish-speaking children's use of verbal inflection in comprehension. Lingua. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2013.06.008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, Silvina. (2004). The acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition and adult L2 acquisition. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naigles, Letitia, & Hoff-Ginsberg, Erika. (1998). Why are some verbs learned before other verbs? Effects of input frequency and structure on children's early verb use. Journal of Child Language 25:95–120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Otheguy, Ricardo, & Zentella, Ana Celia. (2012). Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialect leveling, and structural continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1979). Function and Process in a Variable Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1980). The notion of the plural in Puerto Rican Spanish: Competing constraints on (s) deletion. In Labov, W. (ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic Press. 55–67.Google Scholar
Rivadeneira, Marcela, & Clua, Esteve. (2011). El voseo chileno: Una visión desde el análisis de variación dialectal y funcional en medios de comunicación. Hispania 94:680–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Julie. (1994). Acquisition of variable rules: (-t,d) deletion and (ing) production in preschool children. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Roberts, Julie. (1997). Acquisition of variable rules: A study of (-t,d) deletion in preschool children. Journal of Child Language 24:351–372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shady, Michele, & Gerken, LouAnn. (1999). Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentence comprehension. Journal of Child Language 26:1–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slobin, Dan. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Fergusun, C. & Slobin, D. (eds.), Studies of child language and development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 339–348.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Durham, Mercedes, & Fortune, Liane. (2007). Mam, my trousers is fa'in doon!: Community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19:63–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Durham, Mercedes, & Fortune, Liane. (2009). Universal and dialect-specific pathways of acquisition: Caregivers, children, and t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change 21:69–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, Catherine, & Ferguson, Charles. (1977). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Song, Jae-Yung, Sundara, Megha, & Demuth, Katherine. (2009). Phonological constraints on children's production of English third person singular -s. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52:623–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Dan, Spieker, Susan, & MacKain, Karen. (1983). The prosody of maternal speech: Infant age and context related changes. Journal of Child Language 10:1–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Szagun, Gisela. (2001). Learning different regularities: the acquisition of noun plurals by German-speaking children. First Language 21:109–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. (2005). Language users as creatures of habit: a corpus-based analysis of persistence in spoken English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1:113–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. (2007). Quantitative analysis. In Bayley, R. & Lucas, C. (eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Theories, methods, and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 190–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. (2012). Variationist sociolinguistics: Change, observation, interpretation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Terrell, Tracy. (1981). Diachronic reconstruction by dialect comparison of variable constraints: S-aspiration and deletion in Spanish. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Variation omnibus. Carbondale: Linguistic Research. 115–124.Google Scholar
Theodore, Rachel, Demuth, Katherine, & Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stephanie. (2012). Segmental and positional effects on children's coda production: Comparing evidence from perceptual judgments and acoustic analysis. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 26:755–773.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verlinden, Ann, & Gillis, Steven. (1988). Nouns and verbs in the input: Getner (1982) reconsidered. ABLA Papers 12:163–187.Google Scholar
Widdison, Kirk. (1995). An acoustic and perceptual study of the Spanish sound change s > h. Rivista di Linguística 7:175–190.Google Scholar