Syracuse University, USA
2017年第5卷第1期（总第6期）
65-94
2017-10-17
This study examines the acquisition of variation from the vernacular Syrian Arabic input of 22 parents in the output of their 21 children in the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria, using the four rural vowel variables (o), (o:), (e), and (e:). Each variable has two realizations: rural [o, o:, e, e:] respectively and urban [a, a:, a, a:] respectively. Fathers use the rural vowels more than mothers, but the difference is statistically insignificant. Like fathers, boys use more rural vowels than girls. However, the difference between boys and girls is statistically significant. No correlation emerged between the children’s and parents’ use of the variants, indicating that children are not acquiring their parents’ exact frequencies, which suggests developmental effect rather than statistical learning of parental input effect. The boys’ higher use of the rural forms after age eight is attributed to a social, psychological polarization process between boys and girls to create a highly differentiated gendered linguistic behavior in line with another highly differentiated gendered linguistic behavior related to a stereotypical consonant variable, (q), which is observed in both parents and children.
child dialect acquisition, variation, gender polarization, statistical learning, socio-psychological factors, Syrian Arabic, rural vs. urban vowels
doi: 10.26478/ja2017.5.6.4
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