User:Phonologix/sandbox
This is my sandbox page where I will draft an article on the phonological acquisition process in Italian.
Consonants[edit]
![[]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Parentesi_Quadre.svg/30px-Parentesi_Quadre.svg.png){kind=small}
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | |||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | |||
| Affricate | t͡s d͡z | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | ʎ | ||||
| Approximant | j | w |
Phonological Development[edit]
Very little research has been done on the earliest stages of phonological development in Italian.[1] This article primarily describes phonological development after the first year of life. See the main article on phonological development for a description of first year stages. Many of the earliest stages are thought to be universal to all infants.
Phoneme Inventory[edit]
Word-final consonants are rarely produced during the early stages of word production. Consonants are usually found in word-initial position, or in intervocalic position.[2]
18 Months[edit]
Most consonants are word-initial: They are the stops /p/, /b/, /t/, and /k/ and the nasal /m/. A preference for a front place of articulation is present.[2]
21 Months[edit]
More phones now appear in intervocalic contexts. The additions to the phonetic inventory are the voiced stop /d/, the nasal /n/, the voiceless affricate /t͡ʃ/, and the liquid /l/.[2]
24 Months[edit]
The fricatives /f/, /v/, and /s/ are added, primarily at the intervocalic position.[2]
27 Months[edit]
Approximately equal numbers of phones are now produced in word-initial and intervocalic position. Additions to the phonetic inventory are the voiced stop /g/ and the consonant cluster /kw/. While the word-initial inventory now tends to have all the phones of the adult targets (adult production of the child's words), the intervocalic inventory tends to still be missing four consonants or consonant clusters of the adult targets: /f/, /d͡ʒ/, /r/, and /st/.[2]
Stops are the most common manner of articulation at all stages and are produced more often than they are present in the target words at around 18 months. Gradually this frequency decreases to almost target-like frequency by around 27 months. The opposite process happens with fricatives, affricates, laterals and trills. Initially, the production of these phonemes is significantly less than what is found in the target words and the production continues to increases to target-like frequency. Alveolars and bilabials are the two most common places of articulation, with alveolar production steadily increasing after the first stage and bilabial production gently decreasing. Labiodental and postalveolar production increases throughout development, while velar production decreases.[3]
Phonotactics[edit]
Syllable Structures[edit]
6-10 months[edit]
Babbling becomes distinct from previous, less structured vocal play. Initially, syllable structure is limited to CVCV, called reduplicated babbling. At this stage, children’s vocalizations have a weak relation to adult Italian and the Italian lexicon.[4]
11-14 months[edit]
The most-used syllable type changes as children age, and the distribution of syllables takes on increasingly Italian characteristics. This ability significantly increases between the ages of 11 and 12 months, 12 and 13 months, and 13 and 14 months.[4] Consonant clusters are still absent. Children’s first ten words appear around month 12, and take CVCV format (eg. mama 'mother', papa 'father').[5]
18-24 months[edit]
Reduplicated babbling is replaced by variegated babbling, producing syllable structures such as C1VC2V (eg. cane 'dog', topo 'mouse'). Production of trisyllabic words begins (eg. pecora 'sheep', matita 'pencil').[5] Consonant clusters are now present (eg. bimba 'female child', venti 'twenty'). Ambient language plays an increasingly significant role as children begin to solidify early syllable structure. Syllable combinations that are infrequent in the Italian lexicon, such as velar-labial sequences (e.g. capra 'goat' or gamba 'leg') are infrequently produced correctly by children, and are often subject to consonant harmony.[6]
Stress Patterns[edit]
In Italian, stress is lexical, meaning it is word-specific and partly unpredictable. Penultimate stress (primary stress on the second-to-last syllable) is also generally preferred.[7] This goal, acting simultaneously with the child's initial inability to produce polysyllabic words, often results in weak-syllable deletion. The primary environment for weak-syllable deletion in polysyllabic words is word-initial, as deleting word-final or word-medial syllables would interfere with the penultimate stress pattern heard in ambient language.[8]
Phonological Awareness[edit]
Children develop syllabic segmentation awareness earlier than phonemic segmentation awareness. In earlier stages, syllables are perceived as a separate phonetic unit, while phonemes are perceived as assimilated units by coarticulation in spoken language. By first grade, Italian children are nearing full development of segmentation awareness on both syllables and phonemes. Compared to those children whose mother tongue exhibits closed syllable structure (CVC,CCVC, CVCC, etc.), Italian-speaking children develop this segmentation awareness earlier, possibly due to its open syllable structure (CVCV, CVCVCV, etc.).[9] Rigidness in Italian (shallow orthography and open syllable structure) makes it easier for Italian-speaking children to be aware of those segments.[10]
References[edit]
- ^ Portnoy (2009:240)
- ^ a b c d e Zmarich (2005:759)
- ^ Zmarich (2005:760)
- ^ a b Majorano (2011:53)
- ^ a b Fasolo (2006:86)
- ^ Majorano (2011:58)
- ^ D'imperio (1999:5)
- ^ Majorano (2011:61)
- ^ Cossu (1988:10)
- ^ Cossu (1988:11)
Bibliography[edit]
- Cossu, Giuseppe (1988). "Awareness of phonological segments and reading ability in Italian children". Applied Psycholinguistics. 9 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1017/S0142716400000424.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Costamagna, Lidia (2007). "The acquisition of Italian L2 affricates: The case of a Brazilian learner" (PDF). New Sounds: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech. pp. 138–148.
- D'imperio, Maria Paola (1999). "Phonetics and phonology of main stress in italian". Phonology 16 (1). pp. 1–28.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Fasolo, Mirco (2006). "Babbling and first words in children with slow expressive development". Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. 22 (2): 83–94. doi:10.1080/02699200701600015.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Keren-Portnoy, Tamar (2009). "From phonetics to phonology: The emergence of first words in Italian*". Journal of Child Language. 36 (2): 235–267. doi:10.1017/S0305000908008933.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Majorano, M. (2011). "The transition into ambient language: A longitudinal study of babbling and first word production of Italian children". First Language. 31 (1): 47–66. doi:10.1177/0142723709359239.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Zmarich, Claudio (2005). "Phonetic Inventories in Italian Children aged 18-27 months: a Longitudinal Study" (PDF). Interspeech. pp. 757–760.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help)