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The typological frequency of consonants is highly predictive of their order of acquisition in English

  • Caleb Everett EMAIL logo und Sophie Schwartz
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 22. Februar 2023
Linguistic Typology
Aus der Zeitschrift Linguistic Typology Band 27 Heft 2

Abstract

The order of acquisition of consonants by children is impacted by both language-specific and species-wide factors. The latter factors also help to motivate the crosslinguistic commonness of some consonants. Here we explore the extent of overlap between crosslinguistic commonness and order of acquisition. We test how well the typological commonness of consonants is predictive of their order of acquisition in English, and vice versa, helping to shed light on the extent to which general cognitive and physical factors are explanatory vis-à-vis the acquisition of specific consonant types. We utilize several different sources to demonstrate that typological frequency and order of acquisition are indeed highly mutually predictive. We rely on acquisition data from English. We demonstrate that the crosslinguistic usage of a consonant is a better predictor of its order of acquisition than the language-specific factors tested.

Keywords: acquisition; frequency; PHOIBLE; phonetics; phonology
Corresponding author: Caleb Everett [kheiləb ɛvɹɪt], Anthropology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA, E-mail:

  1. Author contributions: CE: Wrote paper and conducted statistical analyses. CE and SS: Collected data.

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Received: 2022-06-16
Accepted: 2023-01-14
Published Online: 2023-02-22
Published in Print: 2023-07-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Articles
  3. Current research in phonological typology
  4. Investigating the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ of global phonological typology
  5. Canonical phonology and criterial conflicts: relating and resolving four dilemmas of phonological typology
  6. Refining explanation in Evolutionary Phonology: macro-typologies and targeted typologies in action
  7. The prosodic foot beyond prosodic prominence: a preliminary survey
  8. On the comparability of prosodic categories: why ‘stress’ is difficult
  9. Bootstrap co-occurrence networks of consonants and the Basic Consonant Inventory
  10. Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: how often and by which sequences?
  11. Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics
  12. Place typology and evolution of implosives in Indo-Aryan languages
  13. Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories
  14. Word prosody of African versus European-origin words in Afro-European creoles
  15. Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
  16. The typological frequency of consonants is highly predictive of their order of acquisition in English
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0033
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
acquisition; frequency; PHOIBLE; phonetics; phonology

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Articles
  3. Current research in phonological typology
  4. Investigating the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ of global phonological typology
  5. Canonical phonology and criterial conflicts: relating and resolving four dilemmas of phonological typology
  6. Refining explanation in Evolutionary Phonology: macro-typologies and targeted typologies in action
  7. The prosodic foot beyond prosodic prominence: a preliminary survey
  8. On the comparability of prosodic categories: why ‘stress’ is difficult
  9. Bootstrap co-occurrence networks of consonants and the Basic Consonant Inventory
  10. Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: how often and by which sequences?
  11. Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics
  12. Place typology and evolution of implosives in Indo-Aryan languages
  13. Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories
  14. Word prosody of African versus European-origin words in Afro-European creoles
  15. Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
  16. The typological frequency of consonants is highly predictive of their order of acquisition in English
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