文章基本信息

标题：The Acquisition of Finnish Vowel Harmony
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作者：Matti Leiwo ; Pirjo Kulju ; Katsura Aoyama 等
期刊名称：SKY Journal of Linguistics
印刷版ISSN：1456-8438
电子版ISSN：1796-279X
出版年度：2006
卷号：19
期号：SPECIAL
出版社：The Linguistic Association of Finland
摘要：This study investigates the acquisition of vowel harmony by Finnish children. In Finnish, there are five front vowels (/i/, /e/, /y/, /ø/, /æ/) and three back vowels (/u/, /o/, /a/). In Finnish vowel harmony (FVH), back vowels (/u/ /o/ /a/) and front vowels (/y/ /ø/ /æ/) cannot occur together within a native and non-colloquial word, unless it is a compound. Phonologically ‘neutral’ unrounded front vowels (/i/ /e/) can occur with all vowels in a word, whereas front rounded vowels (/y/, /ø/) can occur with front vowels only. It was hypothesized that phonological status of the five front vowels regarding FVH may cause difficulty in the acquisition of FVH. The data of this study were words produced by 196 Finnish children at age 2;6. The data showed that most of Finnish 2;6- year-olds’ productions do not violate FVH, suggesting early mastery of FVH. When there were errors in children’s productions, they were mostly substitutions of back vowels for the front rounded vowels.