Optimality Theory, Phonological Acquisition and Disorders; Daniel Dinnsen; Judith Gierut

Edited by

Daniel A. Dinnsen [+–]

Indiana University

Daniel A. Dinnsen is Chancellor’s Professor of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also a member of the Program in Cognitive Science and core faculty of the NIH Training Grant in Speech, Hearing, and Sensory Communication. He is Co-Principal Investigator of the Learnability Project, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Judith A. Gierut [+–]

Indiana University

Judith A. Gierut is Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Cognitive Science and Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Learnability Project, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Focusing on the phonologies of children with functional (non-organic) speech disorders, this volume reports the latest findings in optimality theory, phonological acquisition and disorders. The book is based on typological, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental evidence from over 200 children. It stands out because of the unique test case that the population offers to optimality theory, particularly with respect to puzzles of opacity, lawful orders of acquisition, and language learnability. Beyond its theoretical significance, this research holds clinical relevance for the assessment and treatment of disordered populations, most notably the systematic prediction of learning outcomes. The volume bridges the gap between theory and application by showing how each informs the other. It is intended for linguists, psychologists, speech pathologists, second-language instructors and those interested in the latest developments in phonological theory and its applied extensions.

Series: Advances in Optimality Theory

Prelims

List of contributors vii

Daniel A. Dinnsen,Judith A. Gierut FREE

Indiana University

Preface ix-xiii

Daniel A. Dinnsen,Judith A. Gierut FREE

Indiana University

PART I: BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

1 Fundamentals of optimality theory [+–] 3-36

Daniel A. Dinnsen £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter presents a tutorial introduction to optimality theory with an emphasis on those aspects most relevant to acquisition and disorders. The principles and workings of the theory are illustrated by considering some fundamental phenomena in the developing sound systems of young children with phonological delays. Issues of learnability and the nature of children’s underlying representations are considered along with phonological conspiracies and their clinical implications.

2 Phonological disorders and the Developmental Phonology Archive [+–] 37-92

Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter describes a protocol that addresses limitations associated with the study of phonological development by shifting the focus from typically developing toddlers to preschoolers with functional phonological disorders. This population affords an opportunity for the use of sophisticated elicitation materials, procedures, and data analyses, as employed on the Learnability Project.

3 Fundamentals of experimental design and treatment [+–] 93-120

Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

Single-subject experimental designs offer a unique framework from which to test the basic premises and predictions of linguistic theory. As applied to phonological development, this set of designs capitalizes on the heterogeneity that is characteristic of development, while aiming to extract patterns of learning that are common across children.

PART II: RESEARCH REPORTS OPACITY EFFECTS

4 A typology of opacity effects in acquisition [+–] 121-176

Daniel A. Dinnsen £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter presents data and analyses for several different emergent opacity effects and situates them in a larger typology. Primary attention is given to a case study involving the emergence and loss of an opaque generalization in the phonology of a child with a phonological delay.

5 An unusual error pattern reconsidered [+–] 177-204

Daniel A. Dinnsen,Ashley W. Farris-Trimble £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter reconsiders a challenging case of an unusual error pattern documented by Leonard and Brown (1984). T (age 3;8) replaced all word-final consonants with [s] but more importantly inserted [s] after word-final vowels. The purpose of this chapter is to show that optimality theory offers a fresh perspective on this error pattern and its subsequent course of development.

6 Innovations in the treatment of chain shifts [+–] 205-222

Michele L. Morrisette,Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

Chain shift error patterns are of particular importance in acquisition because of their reported prevalence and resistance to traditional treatment methods. This chapter reports the results of an innovative approach to treatment for three children with phonological delays who evidence the chain shift error pattern.

PART III: RESEARCH REPORTS DEVELOPMENTAL SHIFTS AND LEARNING

7 Developmental shifts in children’s correspondence judgments [+–] 223-246

Judith A. Gierut,Daniel A. Dinnsen £17.50

Indiana University

External evidence is brought to bear on predictions about phonological acquisition that derive from optimality theory. Specifically, correspondence relationships among outputs, their rankings, and change in these rankings with development were examined from a psycholinguistic perspective.

8 Recalcitrant error patterns [+–] 247-276

Daniel A. Dinnsen £17.50

Indiana University

Children typically suppress their phonological error patterns on their own without explicit instruction, although some error patterns may persist longer than others. For children with phonological delays or disorders, clinical intervention may be required to help eradicate those error patterns. However, treatment does not always meet with success. Certain error patterns appear to be especially recalcitrant, devolving into new overgeneralization errors and/or requiring multiple rounds of treatment. The theoretical and clinical challenge is to explain why some error patterns persist longer than others and/or why some error patterns respond well to treatment, while others do not. Optimality theory offers a fresh perspective on this issue through its characterization of children’s error patterns.

9 The prominence paradox [+–] 277-310

Daniel A. Dinnsen,Ashley W. Farris-Trimble £17.50

Indiana University

Phonological contrasts tend to be preserved or enhanced in prominent contexts and are often merged or lost in weak contexts. One issue for the continuity hypothesis is whether children and adults treat prominent contexts in the same way. This chapter addresses this question by documenting what appears to be a prominence paradox: Fully developed languages preserve contrasts in one set of contexts, but children tend to acquire those contrasts first in the complementary set of contexts.

PART IV RESEARCH REPORTS ACQUISITION OF CONSONANT CLUSTERS

10 Syllable onsets in developmental perception and production [+–] 311-354

Judith A. Gierut,Holly L. Storkel,Michele L. Morrisette £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter addresses longstanding questions about children’s knowledge of phonological structure and how this structure is used to acquire the productive phonology. The primary focus of the chapter are the onsets of syllables, in evaluation of three levels of internal structure.

11 Experimental instantiations of implicational universals in phonological acquisition [+–] 355-376

Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter reports the results of four experiments testing the predictions of two purported universals associated with onset clusters.A first prediction is that the occurrence of true clusters implies the occurrence of affricates, as based on the patterns of first language acquisition. A second is that the occurrence of Consonant+Liquid clusters implies the occurrence of a contrast between /l r/, as based on the patterns of second language acquisition.

12 Gapped s-cluster inventories and faithfulness to the marked [+–] 377-406

Ashley W. Farris-Trimble,Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter addresses the issue of whether children produce gapped inventories as they learn languages with harmonically complete inventories, by exploring children’s acquisition of word-initial s-clusters.

13 A typological evaluation of the split-margin approach to syllable structure in phonological acquisition [+–] 407-426

Jessica A. Barlow,Judith A. Gierut £17.50

San Diego State University

Jessica Barlow is Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at
San Diego State University in California, USA. Her research focuses on phonological
acquisition, phonological theory and phonological disorders, with
an emphasis on English, Spanish and Spanish-English bilingualism. Most
recently she has been focusing on morphophonology in acquisition. Her
research has been published in such journals as Bilingualism: Language &
Cognition; Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics; Frontiers in Psychology; Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research; Language Acquisition; and Lingua.
She is co-editor, with Ashley Farris-Trimble, of Perspectives on phonological
theory and acquisition: In honor of Daniel A. Dinnsen (2014).

Indiana University

This chapter evaluates the typological predictions of the split-margin approach to syllable structure, an elaboration of the Margin Hierarchy which distinguishes different sonority preferences of subsyllabic structure.

14 Constraints on consonant clusters in children with cochlear implants [+–] 427-450

Steven B. Chin £17.50

This chapter examines synchronic and longitudinal variation in the realization of initial consonant clusters by children who are profoundly deaf and use cochlear implants. Productions were elicited in a picturenaming task from 10 children who had used their cochlear implants for between 5 and 7 years and from the same children after they had used their implants for between 8.5 and 11.5 years.

PART V: EPILOGUE

15 On the convergence of theory and application [+–] 451-459

Daniel A. Dinnsen,Judith A. Gierut £17.50

Indiana University

This chapter highlights the findings of the previous chapters, their theoretical and applied implications, and unresolved issues that warrant further study.

End Matter

References 460-495

Daniel A. Dinnsen FREE

Indiana University

Author Index 496-503

Daniel A. Dinnsen FREE

Indiana University

Index of constraints by chapter 504-506

Daniel A. Dinnsen FREE

Indiana University

Subject index 507-513

Daniel A. Dinnsen FREE

Indiana University

Reviews

..this volume should be of significant interest to researchers for the insight it provides into the connections between linguistic theory and language acquisition data. Anyone engaged in phonological acquisition research would do well to spend some time with this book.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition

OTPAD constitutes a success: it is sound, interesting and entertaining. It is enviably well written and well produced, attempting to explain issues both broadly (how events should be viewed) and in detail (how events should be described). The authors are well-versed in and familiar with OT, both at the descriptive and explanatory level, and one can imagine OTPAD serving a very useful purpose in an OT introductory course.
Linguistics, Vol. 45, 2009

The broad swath of data on disordered and typical phonological acquisition is valuable by itself, but the
formulation of generalisations using the tools of OT makes the book a resource for the study of grammar change in acquisition. The theoretical analyses are mainly focused on the specific questions at hand and may have limited application to work on adult phonologies, but they embody a number of innovative claims, and deserve the attention of phonologists.
Eugene Buckley, University of Pennsylvania, Phonology 27, 2010

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Optimality Theory, Phonological Acquisition and Disorders

Daniel A. Dinnsen [+–]

Indiana University

Judith A. Gierut [+–]

Indiana University

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