Sonorant acquisition in Yorùbá child phonology
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2023
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Abstract
This study examines the acquisition of oral consonantal sonorants by Yorùbá children. Extant studies on phonological acquisition have concentrated on stages of attainment, with little attention paid to the corresponding patterns between child articulation and the target language. This study analyzed sonorant simplification patterns during Yorùbá acquisition. One child was purposively selected for longitudinal assessment (from their age 1 to age 4), while 50 children, ages 2 to 5, were stratified random sampled for cross-sectional assessment at various locations familiar to the participants. All children participants were ages 1 to 5 and lived in Ilorin metropolis, Nigeria. Using the classic assumptions of phonemes and Optimality theory (OT), data were subjected to a phonological analysis. Findings showed that there is the emergence of segmental markedness constraints as well as an interface between phonetics and phonology in the outcome of a child’s sound inventory at each developmental stage. We argued that developmental patterns have stage-based variations. It was found that substitution of consonantal sonorants is done with another consonantal sonorants but not obstruents and in some instances, sonorant deletion occurs.
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Sonorant acquisition in Yorùbá child phonology. ALORE: Ilorin Journal of the Humanities. 32: 1-21, Published by the Faculty of Arts, University of Ilorin. ISSN: 0794-4551. https://www.worldcat.org/title/alore-the-ilorin-journal-of-the-humanities/oclc/23673316