Positional effects in phonological development: a case study

Parsons, Jennifer M. (2006) Positional effects in phonological development: a case study. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates positional effects in the acquisition of English, based on a longitudinal case study. Analyses of the acquisition of voicing contrasts and cluster development in onsets are conducted. In addition, an acoustic analysis of Voice Onset Time (VOT) is performed on obstruent stops in singleton onsets in order to test the reliability of the multiple-blind transcriptions used in the corpus. -- While the results were inconclusive with regards to positional effects, significant observations were made. First, the acoustic investigation reveals that manually transcribed data are a reliable means of analysis, especially when following a multiple-blind protocol. Second, the analysis of the acquisition of voicing in onsets reveals that voicing contrasts were acquired extremely early. This finding is further supported by a recent study by Kager et al. (in press). Finally, the investigation of the acquisition of onset clusters reveals that branching onsets and s+C clusters are acquired following independent paths.

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