Direction of Assimilation in Child Consonant Harmony

Abstract

In child language, consonants often assimilate in primary place of articulation across intervening vowels. In adult language, primary place assimilation occurs only between adjacent consonants. In both cases, the first consonant usually assimilates to the second. The standard analysis of directionality of local assimilation in Optimality Theory uses positional faithfulness to protect the second consonant. In this article, it is argued that directionality in child language assimilation is due not to positional faithfulness, but to a markedness constraint that specifies that a consonant preceding a dorsal must agree in place of articulation with it. Along with directionality, this constraint accounts for cases in which dorsals, but not labials, trigger assimilation, which occurs in Korean as well as in child language. Differences between the attested types of assimilation in adult and child language can be explained by differences in the activity of positional faithfulness in the two domains.

Optimality Theory and phonological acquisition

“…This entails that the character of a constraint can change during development. A proposal along these lines is found in Pater & Werle (2001). Pater and Werle argue that their CH-triggering constraint, AGREE, is operative in adult languages too, but on a different domain.…”

“…By now, OT accounts have been presented for virtually every aspect of child phonology: sound substitutions and segmental development (Adam 2003;Dinnsen & McGarrity 1999;Dinnsen, O'Connor & Gierut 2001;Gilbers 2001;Gilbers & Van der Linde 1999;Joppen & Grijzenhout 2000;Inkelas & Rose 2003), prosodic structure, truncations, stress (Adam 2003;Demuth 1995aDemuth , 1995bDemuth , 1996Lleó & Demuth 1999;Pater 1997;Ota 1999), cluster reduction (see references in §2.2.1), syllable structure (Joppen & Grijzenhout 1999;Levelt, Schiller & Levelt 2000;Levelt & Van de Vijver, to appear), consonant harmony (see references in §2.3), variation (Adam 2003;Dinnsen & McGarrity 1999;Gierut, Morrisette & Champion 1999;Pater & Werle 2001), the interaction between phonology and morphology (Adam 2003;Lléo 2001;Lléo & Demuth 1999), everything (Bernhardt & Stemberger 1998). However, rather than presenting a complete overview of OT acquisition research, we choose to focus on two important OT-based statements concerning acquisition.…”

“…Given OT's strong inclination towards continuity, it is interesting to discuss OT accounts of CH from this viewpoint. We will concentrate on the accounts of Goad (1997), Pater (1997), Pater & Werle (2001), Rose (2001) and Fikkert & Levelt (2002).…”

Language acquisition in optimality theory

“…A striking example is consonant harmony, a typical phenomenon in child language (cf. Vihman 1978;Stemberger and StoelGammon 1991;Berg 1992;Levelt 1994;Pater and Werle 2003;Rose 2000;Goad 2001;Fikkert and Levelt 2008). Some examples are given in (9) This process is so intriguing because consonant harmony of primary place of articulation is fairly common in child language, but does not occur in adult languages, which rather strive for asymmetry (Frisch et al 2004 (Levelt 1994;Goad 2001;Fikkert and Levelt 2008).…”

“…As to the origin of the constraints that cause CH, Pater and Werle (2003) assume that they are universal. Pater (1997) assumes that constraints are created by the child.…”