Acquisition of final voicing: An acoustic and theoretical account
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Abstract
This study evaluates an opacity effect in the productions of an English-speaking child (male, aged 2;5). Specifically, the child exhibited the adult pattern of vowel lengthening before voiced obstruents plus the developmental pattern of final-obstruent devoicing, both of which were verified with acoustic analyses. The vowel-lengthening pattern, plus evidence from morphophonemic alternations ([dɔːk] 'dog', [dɔːgi] 'doggie'), attest to Child 1's knowledge of the voice contrast in final position. We adopt optimality theory with candidate chains (OTCC) to account for the child's productions. High-ranking markedness constraints (*V̆C̬, prohibiting short vowels before voiced obstruents, and *C̬#, prohibiting final voiced obstruents) are assumed to account for the child's surface forms at Point 1. The emergence of final voiced obstruents at Point 2 is due to the simple demotion of *C̬#. We consider the implications of this account as they relate to phonological acquisition generally.
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