Biases and Stages in Phonological Acquisition

ISBN-13: 9783639033311 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 280 str.

Anne-Michelle Tessier

Opis

This book presents Error-Selective Learning (ESL), an error-driven mo­del of OT phonological acquisition in which is both restrictive and gradual. Together, these two properties provide a model that can derive many attested intermediate stages in phonological develop­ment, while also understanding how learners eventually converge on the target grammar. ESL is restrictive because it relies on a restrictive ranking algorithm (Prince and Tesar 2004; Hayes 2004) to learn from its errors. At the same time ESL is gradual, because it uses a novel method for selecting errors that drive minimal changes to the grammar from each developmental stage to the next.The book synthesizes the existing arguments for BCD algorithms, presents the mechanics and rationale behind Error-Selective Learning, and provides cross-linguistic support for the ESL approach via attested intermediate stages of L1 phonological development. The books results also emphasize the crucial roles for stored errors, throughout the slow and extended process of building a new phonology.

O autorze

Tessier, Anne-Michelle Anne-Michelle Tessier (Ph.D. 2007, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) is currently an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton AB, Canada. She studies constraint-based phonological theories, their theoretical learnability implications, and their connections to both child and adult language acquisition.