Development of stress -rules in English derivational morphology.
Item
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Title
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Development of stress -rules in English derivational morphology.
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Identifier
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AAI9969700
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identifier
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9969700
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Creator
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Jarmulowicz, Linda D.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Helen S. Cairns
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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The English language has two types of derivational suffixes: those that affect stem stress ('rhythmic suffixes'), and those that do not ('neutral suffixes'). Rhythmic suffixes (e.g., -ic) are attached to a stem after main stress is assigned by the stress rules, following which the entire derived word is cycled back through the stress assignment rules, yielding pairs like ar'tist/artis'tic . Conversely, neutral suffixes are those that are attached after main stress is assigned to a stem word; but the derived word is not recycled through stress rules, yielding pairs such as ar'gue/ ar'gument. From a metrical phonology perspective, the distinction between these two types of suffixes reflects the cyclic application of the English stress rules in rhythmic derivations, but not in neutral derivations (Hayes, 1995.).;Although the development of derivational morphology has been studied from various perspectives, none of these have specifically addressed the phonological stress rules. English speaking children must learn that words derived with rhythmic suffixes feed back to the metrical stress rules, which reassign stress to the entire new word, whereas neutral suffixes have no effect on stem stress.;The present study was designed to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a developmental progression as children master the two types of morphophonemic rules associates with rhythmic and neutral suffixes? (2) Are there differences between the two types of suffixes? (3) Are more frequent suffixes mastered first? (4) Is stress assigned by rule or is word stress lexicalized?;Perception and production tasks were designed, which included rhythmic and neutral suffixes on real and nonsense word stems. Participants included 19 seven-year old children, 18 eight-year old children, and 15 nine-year old children. Several conclusions can be made from the resulting data: (1) The morphophonological rules for neutral suffixes are mastered before those for rhythmic suffixes; (2) There is a developmental progression as school-aged children learn the rhythmic stress rules; (3) Some of the differences between individual rhythmic suffixes can be attributed to suffix frequency; (4) Stress assignment by children appears to be rule based, however access to the lexical representation of a word does not always rely on morphological decomposition.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
