Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T09:49:09.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intuitive syllabification: universals and language specific constraints*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Steven Gillis  and
Georges De Schutter
Steven Gillis*
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
Georges De Schutter
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
*
University of Antwerp – UIA, Department of Linguistics – GER, Center for Dutch Language and Speech, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium (e-mail: gillis@uia.ac.be).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Intuitive syllabifications of 50 five- and six- and 50 eight-year-old children are studied in an experimental setting. The children syllabified Dutch disyllabic words with a single intervocalic consonant that were presented orally to them. The aim was to find out if these syllabifications adhered to the universal principles of syllable structure and if the children's syllabifications witnessed an overruling of the universal phonological constraints by language specific ones. Results indicate that universal principles are sufficient to explain syllabifications. Except for obligatory onset formation, other principles act as soft constraints that are influenced by factors such as stress and vowel and consonant quality. A language specific constraint proposed in the phonological literature, namely bimoraic minimality, is hypothesized to be a result of children's familiarization with the spelling conventions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , October 1996 , pp. 487 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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.)

Footnotes

[*]

We thank our subjects and their teachers for their patient co-operation. Thanks are also due to R. Hertsens, L. Looijschelder, B. Loots and C. Racquet for their assistance in the data collection, and to A. De Houwer for critically reading the manuscript. This research was supported by a Research Grant of the Fund for Joint Basic Research (FKFO 2.0101.94) of the National Fund of Scientific Research (NFWO). S. Gillis is research associate of the NFWO.

References

REFERENCES

Bertoncini, J. & Mehler, J. (1979). Syllables as units in infant speech perception. Infant Behavior and Development 4, 247–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cairns, C. (1988). Phonotactics, markedness and lexical representation. Phonology 5, 209–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clements, G. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Kingston, J. & Beckman, M. (eds), Between the grammar and the physics of speech. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clements, G. & Keyser, S. (1983). CV-phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Collier, R. & De Schutter, G. (1985). Syllaben als klankgroepen. Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 47.Google Scholar
De Schutter, G. & Collier, R. (1986). Intuïtieve syllabisering in het Nederlands. De Nieuwe Taalgids 79, 441–52.Google Scholar
De Schutter, G. & Gillis, S. (1994). Intuïtieve syllabisering in de taalverwerving. Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 80.Google Scholar
Derwing, B. (1992). A ‘pause-break’ task for eliciting syllable boundary judgments from literate and illiterate speakers: preliminary results for five diverse languages. Language and Speech 35, 219–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elbers, L. (1982). Operating principles in repetitive babbling: a cognitive approach. Cognition 12, 45–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallows, D. (1981). Experimental evidence for English syllabification and syllable structure. Journal of Linguistics 17, 309–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1994). On the acquisition of prosodic structure. Dordrecht: ICG.Google Scholar
Hooper, J. B. (1972). The syllable in phonological theory. Language 48, 525–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jusczyk, P. (1993). From general to language specific capacities: the WRAPSA model of how speech perception develops. Journal of Phonetics 21, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kager, R. (1989). A metrical theory of stress and destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kahn, D. (1976). Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Kenstowicz, M. (1994). Phonology in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lahiri, A. & Koreman, J. (1988). Syllable weight and quantity in Dutch. Proceedings of the Seventh West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 217–28.Google Scholar
Liberman, I., Shankweiler, D., Fisher, F. & Carter, B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18, 201–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddieson, I. (1985). Phonetic cues to syllabification. In Fromkin, V. A. (ed.), Phonetic linguistics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mahony, D. & Mann, V. (1992). Using children's humor to clarify the relationship between linguistic awareness and early reading ability. Cognition 45, 163–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mann, V. (1986). Phonological awareness: the role of reading experience. Cognition 24, 65–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morais, J., Bertelson, P., Cary, L. & Alegria, J. (1986). Literacy training and speech segmentation. Cognition 24, 45–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morais, J., Cary, L., Alegria, J. & Bertelson, P. (1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition 7, 323–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, R. & Venneman, T. (1983). Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59, 514–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nooteboom, S. G. & Slis, I. H. (1972). The phonetic feature of vowel length in Dutch. Language and Speech 15, 301–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oller, K. (1986). Metaphonology and infant vocalizations. In Lindblom, B. & Zetterström, R. (eds), Precursors of early speech. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Read, C., Yun-Fei, Z., Hong-Yin, N. & Bao-Qing, D. (1986). The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing. Cognition 24, 31–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Selkirk, E. (1982). The syllable. In Van der Hulst, H. & Smith, N. (eds), The structure of phonological representation. Part II. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Stemberger, J. (1992). A performance constraint on compensatory lengthening in child phonology. Language and Speech 35, 207–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treiman, R. (1989). The internal structure of the syllable. In Carlson, G. & Tanenhaus, M. (eds), Linguistic structure in language processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Treiman, R. & Danis, C. (1988). Syllabification of intervocalic consonants. Journal of Memory and Language 27, 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R. & Zukowski, A. (1990). Toward an understanding of English syllabification. Journal of Memory and Language 29, 66–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trommelen, M. (1983). The syllable in Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van den Broecke, M. & Westers-van Oord, A. (1986). De syllabe en het morfeem tijdens taalverwerving. Forum der Letteren 27, 256–63.Google Scholar
Van der Hulst, H. (1985). Ambisyllabicity in Dutch. In Bennis, H. & Beukema, F. (eds), Linguistics in the Netherlands. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Venneman, T. (1988). Preference laws for syllable structure and the explanation of sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wijnen, F. (1988). Spontaneous word fragmentations in children: evidence for the syllable as a unit in speech production. Journal of Phonetics 16, 187–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, H., Landerl, K., Linortner, R. & Hummer, P. (1991). The relationship between phonemic awareness to reading acquisition: more consequence than precondition but still important. Cognition 40, 219–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed