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Phonological harmony as a processing problem*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Thomas Berg
Thomas Berg*
Affiliation:
University of Oldenburg
*
FB II, English Linguistics Department, University of Oldenburg, Ammerländer Heerstr. 114–18, 2900 Oldenburg, Germany.
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Abstract

This investigation focuses upon an outstanding aspect of child phonology – that of consonant harmony, relabelled ‘phonological harmony’ – and inquires whether representational or processing deficits are responsible for its occurrence. A detailed analysis of the oral output of one German-speaking girl (2;7.15–2;11) supports the contention that the Imperfect Processing Model fares much better in accounting for her harmony strategy than the Incomplete Representation Model. It is established that bilabial harmony is the only type of assimilation she has recourse to, and that this process is mainly used to cope with difficult sounds, although it also implicates consonants which do not pose a production problem. The difficult sounds are arguably not absent from the child's system because they can be uttered in some positions though not in others. The harmonizing tendency is interpreted within the interactive activation model of language production and is claimed to emanate from two particularities of her processing system. She has represented even the difficult elements as network nodes, but some connections between the segment and the feature level are ill developed. As a result, activation cannot spread smoothly between these levels and the relevant units cannot be made available for production. In addition, an excessive linkage strength has been built up among the node [bilabial] and all its associates at the segment level. This puts bilabial consonants into a state of hyperactivation and allows them even to intrude upon those segments which have been perfectly mastered. It is finally shown why these two mechanisms are very unlikely to become permanent features of the child's processing system.

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Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 225 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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Footnotes

*

This article is dedicated, no wonder, to my daughter Melanie who has given me the pleasure of catching a glimpse into her phonological world (amongst other pleasures, of course). Special thanks are owed to Ulrich Schade for fruitful discussion of the issues raised here and to an anonymous reviewer for his/her critical comments on an earlier version. Further thanks go to Petra Krieg and Uwe Laubenstein for their technical assistance.

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