Acquisition of voicing neutralization and alternations in Dutch
Year: 2005
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: An eminent study in morphological acquisition is Jean Berko’s (1958) paper entitled “The child’s learning of English morphology”. In her study, she examined children’s productive knowledge of English allomorphs using a methodology called the Wug Test. Children were tested on their application of plural allomorphs: English words ending in final voiced obstruents, sonorants, and vowels take a /-z/ suffix (e.g. dogs [dgz]), words ending in final voiceless obstruents take a /-s/ suffix (e.g. cats [kaets]) and words with final sibilants take an /z/ suffix (e.g. buses [bs z]). To test productive knowledge, children were shown pictures of non-words in the singular and asked for the plural, as for nonwords they cannot fall back on memory. For example, “This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two _____ (p. 165)”. Berko found that while children aged four and five years displayed some productive knowledge, they were variable in their application of the different allomorphs. This example of plural suffix allomorphy shows how morphology (i.e. adding a plural suffix) and phonology (classically thought to involve voicing assimilation and vowel insertion) can interact. The suffix alternation is thought to be both regular and productive, which means it is acquired relatively early (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998). Since the publication of Berko’s study, the Wug Test has been used to look at first and second language acquisition (Snow & Hoefnagel-Hoehle, 1978), in children with Specific Language Impairments (Goad & Rebellati, 1994; Leonard, Eyer, Bedore & Grela, 1997; Oetting & Rice, 1993), and in a variety of phonological and morphological contexts (most famously the English past tense) across different languages such as Dutch (Kerkhoff, 2004), Hungarian (MacWhinney, 1978), Spanish (Bybee & Pardo, 1981; Kernan & Blount, 1966),
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2105671514