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The influence of dialectal variation on phonological acquisition: a case study on the acquisition of Cantonese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Sou-Mee Tse  and
David Ingram
Sou-Mee Tse
Affiliation:
Mount Sinai Hospital Research Institute, Toronto
David Ingram*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
*
Department of Linguistics, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver B.C. V6T 1W5, Canada.
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Abstract

The phonological acquisition of a young girl whose parents spoke two dialects of Cantonese was examined. The father's dialect had a phonological distinction between initial /l/ and /n/ which was merged into /l/ in the mother's dialect. The child was followed bi-weekly for approximately one year. The results indicate that she acquired neither the mother's nor the father's dialect. Instead, she acquired [l] and [n] as freely varying allophones of a single phoneme. In the first months, [n] was the most frequent realization of the phoneme, with [l] becoming the most frequent one in later sessions. The results are interpreted as supporting the claim that children use all available input in acquiring language rather than limiting themselves to a primary language model.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 281 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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