BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Regular change and lexical diffusion in phonological development -
  Mits Ota\, University of Edinburgh
DTSTART:20101102T160000Z
DTEND:20101102T173000Z
UID:TALK27058@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:In historical linguistics\, there is a long-standing debate ov
 er the extent to which\ndiachronic sound change is regular (in the sense t
 hat it occurs simultaneously across\nall words that contain the relevant p
 honological condition) or lexically diffused (in\nthe sense that it first 
 affects only a subset of condition-matching words and gradually\nspreads t
 o other words). Lexical diffusion in diachronic sound change is known to\n
 be systematically constrained by a number of factors\, including\, most im
 portantly\,\nword frequency. Suggestions have often been made that a simil
 ar question can be\nposed in the context of language acquisition. But to m
 y knowledge\, few studies to this\ndate have systematically examined devel
 opmental data to test whether phonological\nacquisition is best characteri
 zed as regular change or lexical diffusion. In this talk\, I\naddress this
  issue by analyzing children’s production of initial onset clusters (e.g
 .\, /pl/\nin play). I will show that the accuracy and acquisition timing o
 f cluster production in\n1- to 2-year-old English-speaking children are co
 nstrained both by the type of cluster\n(e.g.\, /pl/ vs /tw/) and the input
  frequency of the individual lexical items (e.g.\, /pl/\nin high frequency
  words vs low frequency words). Based on this and other pertinent\nfinding
 s\, I will discuss how best to understand phonological development from th
 e\nperspective of regular or lexically-diffused change.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR