A Universal CV Tendency?-- Another Look at the Syllable Structure in First Language Acquisition

Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium Volume 14 Issue 1 Article 12 3-18-1988 A Universal CV Tendency?-- Another Look at the Syllable Structure in First Language Acquisition Rushen Shi Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Shi, Rushen (1988) "A Universal CV Tendency?-- Another Look at the Syllable Structure in First Language Acquisition," Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 14 : Iss. 1 , Article 12. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls/vol14/iss1/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact , . A Universal CV Tendency?-Another Look at the Syllable Structure in First Language Acquisition Rushen Shi Brigham Young University Theoretical background Phonological theory on universals can be dated back to Jacobson a few decades ago. In his book Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals, Jacobson (1968) claimed that children learn contrasts, not just individual sounds in acquiring the phonology of their native languages. He also attempted to predict the order in which sounds are acquired by saying that the first sounds that children acquire are those of maximal contrast. His hypothesis that there is a universal order of acquisition was made through surveying various diary data. With respect to syllable structure acquisition, he believed that children have a universal tendency of CV or CVCV syllables at the early stages of phonological acquisition. Later a new theory developed out of generative phonology-Stampe's (1969) "Natural Phonology". In addition to supporting Jacobson's idea of universals, Stampe hypothesized that children are born with an adultlike knowledge of phonological processes cornmon to all languages, and that their innate universal tendencies (including CV or CVCV syllable tendency) are gradually suppressed and eliminated in the course of their phonological development. While Stampe's formulation began with phonological universals from languages of the world, Ingram (1976) used Stampe's idea of phonological processes in a more descriptive way to discuss the error patterns in phonological acquisition. These processes include substitution, assimilation and such other processes as cluster reduction, deletion of final consonants, deletion of unstressed syllables and reduplication. Ingram was among those who believed in the children's individual variations in their phonetic preferences and abilities, and their perceptual capacities (Ingram, 1976; Vihman et al., 1986; Studdert-Kennedy et al., 1986; Lund et al., 1983). He discussed his idea in the following way: There is another striking way in which children construct a phonological system that results in marked differences between children. This is the result of individual phonological preferences from child to child . . . . A phonological preference is used here to refer to a preference by a child 113 for a specific articulatory pattern. This preference may be for a particular class of sounds, such as fricatives or nasals, or for a particular kind of syllable structure. (Ingram, 1976:145) The above brief review of theories provide us a clearer view of how linguists see differently such universals as a CV tendency. Since the concern of this paper is on the syllable structure in Ll acquisition, the following review of research will focus on this issue. More specifically, we will mainly look at the data on final consonant deletion, consonant cluster reduction and reduplication--the major processes to be applied for a simplified CV or CVCV tendency. Review of Literature Many studies have been published on the syllable structure of L1 acquisition. Some have demonstrated evidence of a CV/CVCV tendency, and others have demonstrated counter-evidence. Smith et al.(1981) examined a male twin (H) who was 1;4 years at the outset of the initial three months of evaluation. Data was drawn from a 10-month study of this child. They claimed that the typical output of the child was of an open sylable format, with occasional reduplication occurring. In a study done by Ferguson et al.(1983), the data, which were drawn from the research of the Stanford Child Phonology Project during the period 1970-80, showed that at very early stages there is a CV syllable pattern in which the final consonant is deleted (e.g. [po:)] for "boat") and later replaced by [? J. Similarly, Branigan (1976) argued for the universal theory by analyzing the syllable structure and phonemic inventory of one child at the beginning of word production. His data indicated the following patterns: (1) open syllable, (2) all bisyllabic utterances were reduplicated--CVCV, (3) final syllable reduction, (4) unstressed syllable reduction. The data presented seem to warrant Branigan's claim that the CV syllable is the primary syllable unit. The CV structure as opposed to a VC or a eve structure provides the most favorable environment for the acquisition of consonantal distinctions because segments in initial position can be executed without interference from previous articulatory positions and segments in initial position in an open monosyllable will be unaffected by backword assimilation. The constraint to an early CV structure allows for the application of certain "exploration" strategies which help to master a set of consonants in initial position. Once established in the environment, these consonants then become available for productive use in other positions, allowing syllabic structure to expand. (Branigan 1976:131-32) 114 In order to test stampe's Universal hypothesis, Prater et al.(1982) studied the phonological processes of 60 Englishspeaking children ranging in age from 21 to 48 months. The study used Brown's (1973) Mean Length of utterance (MLU) and chronological age for classifying the subjects and the Phonological Process Analysis (Weiner, 1979) to obtain measures. The results indicated that the syllable structure processes-those processes for simplifying the child's production to a CV or CVCV unit--were the ones most frequently used by the children. Deletion of the final consonant was an important simplification process evidenced between MLU levelland MLU level 3. The same was true with cluster reduction and weak syllable deletion. In support of the universal theory, Moskowitz et al.(1980) reviewed several case studies in which cv/CVCV syllables were dominant in the children's early speech. For example, Hildegard's (Leopold, 1939-49) and Braine's (1971) sons produced words with final consonant deletion, consonant cluster deletion and reduplication. Moskowitz thus concluded that a typical syllable pattern is "for the child to produce syllables which have the internal phonetic pattern CV, and to produce word (...truncated)