Learning to liaise and elide comme il faut: evidence from bilingual children

J Child Lang. 2011 Sep;38(4):701-30. doi: 10.1017/S0305000910000231. Epub 2010 Oct 29.

Abstract

Liaison and elision in French are phonological phenomena that apply across word boundaries. French-speaking children make errors in contexts where liaison/elision typically occurs in adult speech. In this study, we asked if acquisition of French liaison/elision can be explained in a constructivist framework. We tested if children's liaison/elision was sensitive to co-occurrence and meaning. We expected children's use of liaison/elision to correlate with their experience with French (estimated by vocabulary). Thirty-one French-speaking children (twenty-five bilingual) between three and five years old produced familiar vowel-initial words, following four words: (1) un, (2) deux, (3) un petit and (4) beaucoup de. The children with smaller French vocabularies produced many vowel-initial words and some consonant-initial chunks. The children with larger French vocabularies produced liaison/elision correctly across several frames while associating a number interpretation with liaised consonants. These results suggest that children use a variety of cues to construct the appropriate use of liaison/elision.

MeSH terms

  • Child Language*
  • Child, Preschool
  • Female
  • France
  • Humans
  • Language Development
  • Male
  • Multilingualism*
  • Phonetics*
  • Semantics
  • Vocabulary