Ling 425/709

Phonetic and Phonological Development

Infant Speech Perception

1. What are the boundaries of the Period of Prelinguistic Development?

2. Contrast the onset of child speech perception and child speech production in relation to the end of the Period of Prelinguistic Development.

3. Briefly describe four possible theories of infant speech perception.

4. Describe how each of these theories differ concerning the effects of linguistic experience on the infant’s speech perception ability.

5. Briefly describe the three major methods used to test infant speech perception.

6. Describe what is meant by categorical perception.

7. Discuss the stimuli and test conditions used by Eimas et al. (1971). What were the results?

8. Contrast the stimulus items used and method of scoring used by Eilers et al. (1978) with that used by Eimas et al. (1971).

9. Summarize three controversies that characterize the research on infant speech perception.

10. Describe Werker & Tees (1984) results on the perception of non-native sounds.

11. When does infant speech production begin? Why?

12. What are the four primary differences between the adult’s and the infant’s vocal tract?

14. Outline the major characteristics of Oller’s five stages of infant vocalizations.

15. Discuss three possible causes for the stages found by Oller. Include Oller’s objections to a totally biological explanation.

Phonological Development

1. Describe the difference between phonetic discrimination and phonemic contrast.

2. What feature makes Jakobson’s theory of phonological development explanatory? Explain.

3. What data does Jakobson use to predict an invariant order of phonological development?

4. What role does Jakobson give to individual variation in his theory?

5. What evidence does Jakobson provide to demonstrate the effect of a child’s phonology on her speech?

6. Why would Jakobson predict the sounds babbled by infants would be unrelated to their phonological development?

7. What are Jakobson’s Laws of Irreversible Solidarity?

8. Describe Jakobson’s Principle of Maximal Contrast.

9. What early phonemic contrasts does Jakobson predict?

10. Why is Jakobson’s theory difficult to test?

11. Describe the clinical method Svachkin (1948) used in his study of phonological development.

12. How do Svachkin’s findings support Jakobson’s predictions?

13. How do Svachkin’s findings contradict Jakobson’s predictions?

14. How does Braine’s study support a level of phonological organization in children’s speech?

15. What are two way in which the Phone Class method exaggerates individual variation?

16. How does the Phonetic Inventory method minimize individual variation?

17. Briefly outline the three steps to the Phonetic Inventories and Phonological Contrast approach.

18. What are six characteristics of the Lexical Parameter in children’s phonological development?

19. How does phonological development in K’iche’ contrast with that in English?

20. What is meant by the term “functional load”?

21. What do the results of the Pye, Mateo, Pfeiler, Lopez & Gutierrez (2006) study add to the earlier study of K’iche’?