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Comparing Phoneme Frequency, Age of Acquisition, and Loss in Aphasia: Implications for Phonological Universals

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Comparing Phoneme Frequency, Age of Acquisition, and Loss in Aphasia: Implications for Phonological Universals Cognitive Neuropsychology ISSN: 0264-3294 (Print) 1464-0627 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pcgn20 Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia: Implications for phonological universals Cristina Romani, Claudia Galuzzi, Cecilia Guariglia & Jeremy Goslin To cite this article: Cristina Romani, Claudia Galuzzi, Cecilia Guariglia & Jeremy Goslin (2017) Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia: Implications for phonological universals, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 34:7-8, 449-471, DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2017.1369942 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2017.1369942 © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa Published online: 15 Sep 2017. UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Submit your article to this journal Article views: 113 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 4 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=pcgn20 COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY, 2017 VOL. 34, NOS. 7–8, 449–471 https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2017.1369942 ARTICLE Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia: Implications for phonological universals Cristina Romania, Claudia Galuzzib, Cecilia Guarigliab,c and Jeremy Goslind aSchool of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK; bNeuropsychology, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy; cDepartment of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; dSchool of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Phonological complexity may be central to the nature of human language. It may shape the Received 26 April 2017 distribution of phonemes and phoneme sequences within languages, but also determine age of Revised 31 July 2017 acquisition and susceptibility to loss in aphasia. We evaluated this claim using frequency Accepted 3 August 2017 statistics derived from a corpus of phonologically transcribed Italian words (phonitalia, available KEYWORDS at phonitalia,org), rankings of phoneme age of acquisition (AoA) and rate of phoneme errors in Aphasic errors; featural patients with apraxia of speech (AoS) as an indication of articulatory complexity. These measures markedness; phoneme were related to cross-linguistically derived markedness rankings. We found strong acquisition; phoneme correspondences. AoA, however, was predicted by both apraxic errors and frequency, suggesting frequencies independent contributions of these variables. Our results support the reality of universal principles of complexity. In addition they suggest that these complexity principles have articulatory underpinnings since they modulate the production of patients with AoS, but not the production of patients with more central phonological difficulties. 1. Introduction nature of complexity principles and the extent of their Not all phonemes are born equal. Some seem to have influence. The purpose of this study is to provide this a privileged status: They occur more frequently across evidence by assessing the association between different languages and are more frequent within measures of phoneme frequency that have recently languages (Greenberg, 1978; Ladefoged & Maddieson, become available for Italian (phonItalia.org; Goslin, 1996; Maddieson, 1984), are acquired earlier by chil- Galluzzi, & Romani, 2014), measures of phoneme resi- dren (e.g., Kager, Pater, & Zonneveld, 2004; Stoel- lience in aphasia (from error corpora recently Gammon, 1985), and are better preserved after brain described in Galluzzi et al., 2015), and measures of damage (see Jakobson, 1941/1968 for the original phoneme age of acquisition (AoA; derived by Zano- hypothesis; see Buchwald, 2009; Galluzzi, Bureca, bini, Viterbori, & Saraceno, 2012). Guariglia, & Romani, 2015; Marquardt, Reinhart, & We should note from the start that we assess Peterson, 1979; Romani & Galluzzi, 2005; Wolk, 1986, associations between production measures: how for empirical evidence). These observations suggest often phonemes are produced in the adult language, the existence of hierarchies of phonological complex- how early they are produced by children, and how ity, which are universal and hold across different well they are produced by aphasic patients. We do domains of investigation because they are grounded not consider perceptual measures. It is likely that in characteristics of the human articulatory or percep- perceptual and production measure complexity will tual apparatus. The existence of such hierarchies is correlate because phoneme distributions will be central to many linguistic theories and to theories of affected by both how easy it is for a phoneme to be language development as outlined below. In spite of produced and how easy it is to be perceived. this, however, we have very little empirical evidence However, assessing the relative impact of production of the consistency of measures derived from different and perceptual measures of complexity across domains whereas this will help us to better specify the domains is beyond the scope of this paper. CONTACT Cristina Romani [email protected] © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 450 C. ROMANI ET AL. The role of within-language frequency in explaining a more complex structure implies the acquisition of linguistic regularities has been increasingly recognized, the simpler counterpart. In aphasia, more complex although, for the most part, the debate has focused structures are lost before simpler ones. This is known upon lexical, morphological, and syntactic represen- as the “regression hypothesis”. tations rather than phonological representations per In the sixties, Greenberg, following the ideas of se (see Barlow & Kemmer, 2000; Bod, Hay, & Jannedy, Jakobson and, more generally, of the Prague school 2003; Bybee & Hooper, 2001; Diessel, 2007). For of phonology, published a short book outlining what example, it has been noted that, if there is a discre- he believed to be universal principles that dictate pancy in the number of morphemes used to represent which language structures are intrinsically simpler singular and plural words, then the singular words, than others across phonology, morphology, and which are used more frequently, are represented with semantics (Greenberg, 1966–2005, Language Univer- fewer morphemes. This makes them shorter and less sals: With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies). effortful to produce (accordingly, nouns that are used These principles were derived chiefly from phonology. most commonly in the plural form are often not In phonology, the “unmarked” values of phonemes marked by an extra morpheme; see, in English, will be those that require a position of the articulators people, fish, etc.). The same principles should hold in closer to their position at rest, and which, therefore, the phonological domain. Phonemes and phonological require less effort to be produced than the secondary sequences that are simpler should be used most often. “marked” version.1 Unmarked values will be identified For example, Piantadosi, Tily, and Gibson (2012) have by a number of characteristics: (a) They will be those provided a nice demonstration of the tendency of preserved when a contrast is neutralized in a given lin- language to use and re-use easier phonological forms guistic environment (the marked feature will change by showing that words that are shorter, are more fre- to unmarked); (b) they will show more allophonic quent, and use sequences with higher phonotactic variability and characterize the basic allophone2; (c) probability are associated with higher degrees of they will characterize more phonemes than the corre- homophony and polysemy. It remains to be deter- sponding marked values (or an equal number, never mined, however, what simplicity/complexity refers to, fewer phonemes); crucially (d) they will be more fre- how strong these complexity effects are across differ- quent in the language than the corresponding ent domains, and how complexity effects are modu- marked values. Note that the fourth characteristic is lated by other variables. Before tackling these issues, a direct consequence of the first three. we now briefly outline how complexity principles In the era of generative phonology (Chomsky & have come to the forefront of linguistic theories. Halle, 1968, The Sound Pattern of English), principles of complexity took a less central role in linguistic the- ories. The emphasis was on how to derive surface pho- 1.1. Complexity in linguistic theories nological representations from deeper, more primitive Linguists have long noted that certain speech sounds representations using a formalized set of rules. Mark- occur more often than others and tried to explain edness principles influenced the application of these these differences by referring to their relative com- rules only in a limited way (although see Stampe, plexity. The Russian linguist Roman Jakobson first pro- 1973, who stressed universal complexity principles posed the notion of implicational universals, according based on articulation, and
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