Summary: Default unstressed initial syllable? re-

[Menn, Lise]

Sorry, I've had a family emergency, or I would have been more active
in this conversation!  In my  older son Stephen's case (and I'm
trying to figure  out where I published it, as it was only a note in
passing), the dummy syllable seemed to have been influenced by the
English article; it was found before articles were used, and was
normally  /tih/ (sorry, no IPA available on this e-mail, ih = small
capital i) (barrette > tih'bet), but /tihm/ if there was a nasal in
the target word (Melissa > tihm'lissa). However, for two words
commonly found with 'some' (as in Do you want some salami/baloney?),
he said /sihm'sami/ and /sihm'boni/ respectively...which is why I
think the article is involved here.
	I know I used the 'dummy syllable' term pretty early, but I
don't know if I made it up or got it from Smith ormaybe Ferguson
(anybody have a copy of Ferguson, Peiser, & Weeks handy?)

The 'recycling retruck' reminds me of a later isolated perseverative
rhythm-based error that Stephen was very aware of but was unable to
inhibit (at least for a few days): attempts at 'pencil sharpener'
came out, willy nilly, as 'pencinal sharpener' /'pehnsihnal/.  His
immediate awareness that it was wrong puts it on the borderline
between a slip of the tongue and an isolated child phonology 'rule'.

	Lise

At 4:46 PM -0800 1/10/05, Lynn Santelmann wrote:
>Thank you to all you responded to my query.
>
>It appears that the use of a type of default syllable for unstressed
>syllables is relatively common (just unfamiliar to me). The use of
>[ri] for all unstressed syllables was documented by Neil Smith
>(1973) for his son Amahl (pp. 172-173). In addition,  Gnanadesikan
>(2004) reports a child using fi as a replacement syllable in much
>the same contexts. Several people reported that they have seen this
>commonly in clinical practice and in child phonology research.  Joe
>Stemberger noted that many children show restrictions on initial
>unstressed syllables when they first appear, noting that
>reduplication is more common than default syllables such as my son
>is using. (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998).
>
>What appears to be uncommon is my son's earlier use of "recycling
>retruck". I still haven't a clue as to where that came from. Johanne
>Paradis noted that her French/English bilingual son overused re, as
>in re-see, re-put, but that use is at least semantically
>appropriate! This earlier use of 're' was definitely epenthetic, and
>opened up a new slot. I wonder if he was making the words in the
>phrase parallel in structure?
>
>As for the choice of re- [ri], Patricia Donegan also speculates that
>these might be idiosyncratic based on the initial unstressed
>syllables of a child's favorite or perhaps first word, e.g., Ross's
>[mA] appeared to occur first in [mAgini] 'Lamborghini' (a toy car).
>This is definitely true for my son's re [ri] – recycling trucks were
>(and still are) a favorite topic of conversation!
>
>The choice of 'default' syllable does seem to vary, as can be seen
>by the variety of examples that I received that have not been
>reported in the literature:
>Sharon Glennen reported that her son had a similar phenomenon at age
>3, but used "buh" ([b+schwa], I'm assuming).
>Brenda L. Beverly reported that her son (same age as mine) is using
>[b+schwa] (the syllable of 'before') in words like 'bagot'.
>Karin Pollock reported her daughter using 'kuh' [k+schwa]
>Eve Clark wrote: "D doing something very similar, and opting for a
>single unstressed prefix on words that required that. His was based
>on the first syllable of 'forget' I think, and it turned up as 'fe-'
>(no 'r') on a variety of words as the 'default prefix'.
>Patricia Donegan wrote: "Two other cases I'm aware of are John (son
>of David) Stampe's use of
>[tu] or [tA] for an initial unstressed syllable ([tutar] for guitar,
>[tAkAmbAs tuhaido] for Columbus Ohio, etc.), and John Ross' son's
>use of [mA] in similar contexts.  Neither is, as far as I know,
>reported in the literature, though."
>
>References:
>Bernhardt, B.H., & Stemberger, J.P. (1998). Handbook of Phonological
>Development: From the Perspective of constraint-based nonlinear
>phonology. San Diego: Academic Press.
>
>Gnandesikan, Amalia. 2004. Markedness and faithfulness constraints in
>child phonology. In R, Kager, J. Pater and W. Zonneveld, eds.
>Constraints in Phonological Acquisition. CUP. 73-108.
>
>Peters, A.M. & L. Menn. (1993). False starts and filler syllables:
>ways to learn
>grammatical morphemes. Language 69, 742-777
>
>Smith, Neilson V. 1973. The Acquisition of Phonology: A Case Study. CUP.
>
>
>***************************************************************************************
>Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor, Applied Linguistics
>Portland State University
>P.O. Box 751
>Portland, OR 97201-0751
>phone: 503-725-4140
>fax: 503-725-4139
>e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu (that's last name, first initial)
>web: www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls
>*******************************************************************************


--
Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor.

	Lise Menn				office phone 303-492-1609
	Professor	of Linguistics		home fax     303-413-0017
	University of Colorado		Visiting Professor, University of Hunan
		Office: Hellems 293				April-May
	Secretary-elect, AAAS section Z (Linguistics)
Mailing address:
	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

Japanese version of "Shirley Says"
http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm

Academy of Aphasia
http://www.academyofaphasia.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20050111/59066297/attachment.htm>