Odp: phonostylistic processes

[Anna Szymanska]

Dear Lise,

Some time ago I recieved your  response to my e-mail concerning
phonostylistic processes among small children.

I realise that we develop our stylistic variants over lifetime and we "work"
on the  way we speak every day. What I'm particularly intrested in is,
however,  not the mere style of our utterances but the phonostylistics. I'd
like to find out when children begin to recognise various phonostylistic
processes, for example, assimilation. In which period of their development
do they become conscious of the proper pronounciation? In other words, when
a parent performs reciprocal assimlation in  "don't you", or regressive
assimlation "ten bikes", etc. when does the child become aware of the
difference between assimilated and non-assimilated sound. Does this
recognision take place when children are 2(?), 3(?) or 4 -years old, or
perheps only when they learn how to read and write?

I'd be really grateful if you could comment on that.
Anna Szymanska


----- Original Message -----
From: Lise Menn <lise.menn at colorado.edu>
To: Anna Szymanska <aniaxs at go2.pl>
Cc: <info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: phonostylistic processes


> >I would like to know when phonostylistic processes start to develop. Can
> >anyone tell me something about it?
> >
> >Thank you in advance.
> >
> >Anna
>
> I don't know if I ever mentioned this in print anywhere, but my
> dissertation subject Jacob (Menn 1979) did a very creditable imitation of
> his father's emphatic negation 'no way!'  (general emphasis, extra length
> on vowel) before 18 months.
> More generally, I think that this is like the question 'when do
> children begin to acquire their dialect?'  They do so from the beginning
of
> language - they don't start with a 'neutral' or 'unmarked' form and then
> develop  specific variants, but rather they start from examples and
attempt
> to match ones that attract them.  Frequency, match to existing phonetic
> (including babble) repertoire, emotional/cognitive interest, and
> suprasegmental properties all play a role in the selection of targets.
> Mastery of what different stylistic variants mean to different
> hearers is, on the other hand, developed over a lifetime (there are still
> times when I fail to detect sarcasm).
> Lise Menn
>
>
> Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor.
>
> Lise Menn office phone 303-492-1609
> Professor home fax     303-413-0017
> Department of Linguistics
> UCB 295
> University of Colorado
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
>
> Lise Menn's home page
> http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/lmenn/
>
> "Shirley Says: Living with Aphasia"
> http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/Shirley4.pdf
>
>