The prosodic structure of initial words

• Grant number: 06/06455-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: February 10, 2007
• End date: May 09, 2007
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Raquel Santana Santos
• Grantee: Raquel Santana Santos
• Host Investigator: Paula Fikkert
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

Abstract

Since the late 70s, the papers about phonological acquisition have been discussing the prosodic template of early words (cf. Allen & Hawkins 1978; 1980, Echols & Newport 1982; Ingram 1974 among others). Many of them argue that there is a trochaic tendency (strong-weak syllables) which is inate and would be responsable for the large quantity of two-syllable penultimate stress in child language words, even in languages whose stress pattern is iambic (weak-stress)- cf. Demuth 1996, Demuth & Fee 1996, among others. However, these results are not unannimous. In the 80s, some studies about inglês argued that there is no initial tendency, and it is possible to find both trochees and iambs (cf. Hochberg 1988ab, for example). Besides that, some recently studies have been pointed to an iambic tendency is the acquisition of some languages (cf. Pater 1997, Santos 2001, 2006). The explanation for the different results founded in the literature evolve different aspects. When we compare the different studies, we see that they use different methodologies - that can influence the results - or the target languages have different stress patterns (english and dutch are trochaic languages, and french is a iambic one, for example). Not only that, but some studies argue that the tendencies can be due to differences among the children acquiring a language (Pater 1997) or because the input children has access - the most frequent pattern children hear - has some influence in the order the prosodic templates are acquired (Prieto 2004). With this picture in mind, this project aims to make a very detailled comparative analysis between acquisition data from portugues and dutch. The question this project try to answer is the following: is the initial trochaic tendency inate or language specific? (AU)