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Changing speakers/changing language: The interface of language variation and language acquisition

Julie Roberts
University of Vermont

For the past ten years child language, and earlier, variation has been the focus of a small group of sociolinguists, who have produced research that has shown that children as young as three acquire fairly complicated dialect patterns and have the potential to contribute to language change by showing preference to those changes present in their language environment (Kovac and Adamson 1981; Wolfram 1989; Roberts and Labov 1995; Roberts 1997; Foulkes, Docherty et al. 1999, for example). These studies have contributed to our knowledge of how dialects emerge in young speakers as well as how language develops. However, the research, thus far, has been predominately descriptive in nature and has not, as yet, touched on many of the larger theoretical questions raised by research by both psycholinguists and variationists. In addition, unlike the research in psycholinguistics, these studies have not explored the earliest emergence of language.

For example, since the early 1900s, the study of phonological acquisition has moved beyond the assumption that the child's phonetic output moves from the universal to the language-specific (Jakobson 1941/1968) and posited that the child's sound system is acquired through an interaction of functionalism and genetics as the child grows, during her first two to three years, to sound more like the adults and older children around her. Locke (1983) notes that although naturalness of the phoneme to be acquired assists in its acquisition, the fact that a child uses a phoneme does not necessarily mean that the child has acquired all of its surface characteristics. Child phonologists have noted the utility of exploring cross-linguistic, but not cross-dialect, acquisition in order to contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon. They have shown that, even before meaningful speech occurs, children's early sound productions are related to the language present in their learning environment (Boysson-Bardies, Sagart et al. 1984; Boysson-Bardies and Vihman 1991). This is true and regardless of the segment type (i.e., vowels as well as consonants). Nevertheless, Locke (1983) notes that it is difficult to ascertain when the child has attained full mastery of the range of gestures that make up the emergent phonemes and proposes an experiment in which adults are asked to learn a phonetically-based and non-phonetically based rule to model this type of learning. However, it would seem that the 'natural' experiment of first dialect acquisition would present a far better means of exploring this issue.

Variationists, too, have a long history of exploring the mechanisms, physiological and historical, of language change. Although children are clearly in the throes of changing systems during the acquisition period, and, therefore, not reliable demonstrators of any systematic stability, they can be viewed as providing a vantage point into some of the more physiological aspects of change. As such, we can learn from them what changes are likely to have the "advantage" of phonetic naturalness and/or simplicity, and when children, even during the time when the language learning curve may be at its steepest, will override the physiological constraints in favor of speech community membership.

The overview above illustrates two possibilities in which the study of child variation can bring interdisciplinary theory and method to bear on the investigation of questions that could be of interest to both fields. The current presentation will review this theoretical and cross-linguistic acquisition information and discuss the contribution that cross-dialectal research can make. This review will provide an introduction to a new project on the study of dialect features during the earliest emergence of language (age 18 months to 3.) Pilot data will be presented featuring speakers from three dialect areas: New York (Long Island), Memphis, TN, and northern Vermont with particular focus on the acquisition of low back vowels in the three dialect areas.

References:

Boysson-Bardies, B. D., L. Sagart, et al. (1984). "Discernible differences in the babbling of infants according to target language." Journal of Child Language 11: 1-15.

Boysson-Bardies, B. D. and M. M. Vihman (1991). "Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages." Language 67(2): 297-319.

Foulkes, P., G. Docherty, et al. (1999). Tracking the emergence of structured variation. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics. Leeds, University of Leeds: 1-25.

Jakobson, R. (1941/1968). Child language, aphasia and phonological universals. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell The Hague: Mouton.

Kovac, C. and H. D. Adamson (1981). Variation theory and first language acquisition. Variation Omnibus. D. Sankoff and H. Cedergren. Edmonton, Alberta, Linguistic Research, Inc.

Locke, J. (1983). Phonological Acquisition and Change. New York, Academic Press.

Roberts, J. (1997). "Hitting a moving target: Acquisition of sound change in progress in Philadelphia children." Language Variation and Change 9: 249-266.

Roberts, J. and W. Labov (1995). "Learning to talk Philadelphian:." Language Variation and Change 7: 101-122.

Wolfram, W. (1989). Structural variability in phonological development: Final nasals in Vernacular Black English. Language Change and Variation. R. W. Fasold and D. Schiffrin. Amsterdam, John Benjamins: 301-332.

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