Phonological Acquisition Studies in First Languages: A Review

Abstract

For many years, studies have been conducted to examine speech sound development in different languages. These studies have provided useful references regarding the course and time of acquisition of linguistic features across different languages, expanding our knowledge of developmental phonology. However, there has been limited research conducted on Vietnamese phonological acquisition and phonological developmental patterns of Vietnamese-speaking children has yet been fully understood. Also, the relationship between statistical learning and Vietnamese speech sound development is still an area that needs further investigation. Evidence from previous research acknowledges the important role of statistical learning; however this research rarely considers how statistical learning influences speech production over time or directly examines a learning mechanism from the statistics of the languages which are studied. The theoretical framework of statistical learning has been applied in only a few studies to expand our knowledge on childhood speech sound accuracy and no research has been done to look into the dependency between frequency effects and phonological acquisition in the Vietnamese language. My proposed study will focus on production of initial consonants of 2-3 years old Vietnamese speaking children and will aim to decide whether the observed effects of consonant frequency in other languages holds true for Vietnamese language. As part of my Ph.D research project, this paper briefly reviews evidence and general trends in phonological acquisition from cross-linguistic studies, providing information on Vietnamese phonology, discussing how the statistical learning framework will be applied to the study Vietnamese phonological acquisition. Potential features that may influence developmental trajectories of Vietnamese speaking children, including numbers of consonants, vowels, phonotactic structures and dialectal differences within the language will also be mentioned.