title: The relation between order of acquisition, segmental frequency and function: the case of word-initial consonants in Dutch.
abstract: The impact of input frequency (IF) and functional load (FL) of segments in the ambient language on the acquisition order of word-initial consonants is investigated. Several definitions of IF/FL are compared and implemented. The impact of IF/FL and their components are computed using a longitudinal corpus of interactions between thirty Dutch-speaking children (age range: 0 ; 6-2 ; 0) and their primary caretaker(s). The corpus study reveals significant correlations between IF/FL and acquisition order. The highest predictive values are found for the token frequency of segments, and for FL computed on minimally different word types in child-directed speech. Although IF and FL significantly correlate, they do have a different impact on the order of acquisition of word-initial consonants. When the impact of IF is partialed out, FL still has a significant correlation with acquisition order. The reverse is not true, suggesting that the acquisition of word-initial consonants is mainly influenced by their discriminating function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerp, CLiPS Research Center, Antwerpen, Belgium. steven.gillis@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Lieve
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Van Severen
authors.forename: Joris J M
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Gillis
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Molemans
authors.forename: Renate
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Van Den Berg
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: De Maeyer
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gillis
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D010700:Phonetics; D014825:Vocabulary