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dc.rights.licenseCC-BY-NC-ND
dc.contributor.advisorBree, E.H. de
dc.contributor.advisorKerkhoff, A.O.
dc.contributor.advisorZonneveld, W.
dc.contributor.authorVreugdenhil, A.H.
dc.date.accessioned2010-09-01T17:01:31Z
dc.date.available2010-09-01
dc.date.available2010-09-01T17:01:31Z
dc.date.issued2010
dc.identifier.urihttps://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/5506
dc.description.abstractLanguage acquisition theory predicts young children to show a preference for unmarked structures. Voiced obstruents as well as obstruent clusters are marked contexts. What follows is that children should initially prefer voiceless obstruent clusters over voiced obstruent clusters. To provide empirical evidence for this claim, an experiment was designed that presented Dutch participants with past tenses, because Dutch verbs with voiceless or voiced obstruent-final verb stems yield past tenses with voiceless or voiced obstruent clusters, respectively. The present experiment was run with six-year-old and nine-year-old children as well as adults. The results show a clear preference for the voiced past tense suffix [-dǝ] by the nine-year-old group against a preference for the voiceless past tense suffix [-tǝ] by the six-year-old group and the adults. Other important findings are that the orthographical representation results in less incorrect inflections and that phonotactically illegitimate pseudo-verbs trigger more incorrect inflections.
dc.description.sponsorshipUtrecht University
dc.language.isoen
dc.titleVoicing of obstruent clusters in Dutch past tense acquisition
dc.type.contentMaster Thesis
dc.rights.accessrightsOpen Access
dc.subject.keywordsphonology
dc.subject.keywordslanguage acquisition
dc.subject.keywordsobstruents
dc.subject.keywordsvoicing
dc.subject.keywordspast tense
dc.subject.keywordsDutch
dc.subject.courseuuLinguistics: the Study of the Language Faculty


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