Journal article
Stop contrast acquisition in child Kriol: Evidence of stable transmission of phonology post Creole formation
RL Bundgaard-Nielsen, BJ Baker, EA Bell, Y Wang
Journal of Child Language | Published : 2024
Open access
Abstract
Many Aboriginal Australian communities are undergoing language shift from traditional Indigenous languages to contact varieties such as Kriol, an English-lexified Creole. Kriol is reportedly characterised by lexical items with highly variable phonological specifications, and variable implementation of voicing and manner contrasts in obstruents (Sandefur, 1986). A language, such as Kriol, characterised by this unusual degree of variability presents Kriol-acquiring children with a potentially difficult language-learning task, and one which challenges the prevalent theories of acquisition. To examine stop consonant acquisition in this unusual language environment, we present a study of Kriol st..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Academy of Science
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Mandy Manggurra, Lenny Joshua dagger, Hilda Ngalmi, the children who participated in this study, and their families who supported and encouraged our research. We also thank Dr. Stephen and Ms. Joanne Hill for their generous assistance and hospitality, and Associate Professor Barbara Kelly dagger for her encouragement, advice, and enthusiasm. We gratefully thank the Australian Research Council for funding the research reported here through the Discovery Project program (Grant DP130102624) to the first two authors, and we thank the National Science Foundation and the Australian Academy of Science for work supported through an EAPSI fellowship (award #1515018) to the third author.