1. How long is a vowel? A first look at quantitative vowels of four year old Samoan speaking children Elaine Ballard and Helen Charters University of Auckland 10 July 2009

2. Vowel acquisition research Spanish –5 vowel system –Accuracy around 93% for 2 year olds –Accuracy reaches 98% for 3 & 4 year olds (Goldstein 2007) English –26 vowel system –Vowels are produced without errors by the age of 3 (Templin 1957) –Over 90 % accurate with their vowel production by the fourth year of their life. (Dodd, Holm et. al 2003)

3. Interpretation Children acquire vowel inventories much earlier on than consonantal ones Children do not generally produce errors in acquisition of vowels –(Zhu Hua and B. Dodd 2006)

4. Samoan Western Polynesian language 131,103 people of Samoan ethnicity live in New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand 2006) Samoan community is the largest Pasifika community in NZ, mostly living in Auckland

5. Vowels –5 qualitatively different /i e a u o/ (Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992) Phonemic length distinction? /tama ː / ‘father’ vs. /tama/ ‘child’ /malu ː / ‘soft’ vs. /malu/ ‘shelter’

6. Pawley 1966 “Vowel length contrasts phonemically” but... “Long vowels are treated as consecutive identical vowels” “A long vowel has about the length of a [CV́CV] sequence or of two consecutive different vowels”

7. Phonetic Vowel Length Word final syllable Short VLong V Hovdhaugen (1992): 30-120 165-202 msecs Condax (1990): 65-69 147-168 msecs A phonetically long vowel is at least twice as long as a short vowel

8. This Study Participants –20 children; 14 girls and 6 boys –9 children 4;0-4;6, 11 children 4;7-4;11. –Attending full immersion ā’oga amata in Auckland –Mixed language backgrounds Some Samoan dominant Some English dominant

9. Picture naming task Targeting all Samoan phonemes 75 colour drawings of common objects Long vowels occurred at low frequency; no [i:], or [e] 1-1 elicitation by Samoan speaker 20-25 minute session

10. Sample O le ā le mea lea? (what is this?) O le fetū (it’s a star)

11. Results: Vowel accuracy

12. Discussion No problems with short vowels –Almost 100% accuracy Performance on long vowels was inconsistent –Vowel quality was always accurate –8 children produced at least 1 example of an accurate long V. e.g. /mu ː mu ː / ‘red’, /fetu ː / ‘star’. –Only one child reached 70% accuracy for quantity on long vowels –Accuracy of all others was 40% or lower

13. Errors in quantity In comparison with adult speakers –children did not maintain a consistent difference between the long and the short vowels. –Children lengthened some vowels inappropriately [fo ː liŋa] for /foliŋa/ ‘face’

14. Child sample Cf. Adult long V 165-202 / 147-168 msecs Children’s long vowels are not long enough

15. Possible Factors Age, gender or social economic status (SES) Language dominance? Nature of the language input Phonemic status

16. Age, Gender & SES All children from same SES No significant difference between the two age groups Boys performed as well as the girls in all parts of the assessment

17. Language Dominance A factor in bilingual Welsh-English acquisition –‘r’ in Welsh was closer to English approximant than the Welsh trill. (Ball, Müller and Munro, 2006) English lacks phonemic vowel length, but average length of a stressed V is 132 msecs in English, (Klatt 1975) Similar to stressed short V in Samoan (53-150 msecs) It is shorter than the shortest Samoan long vowel (147 msecs).

18. Samoan input Long vowels are infrequent in Samoan Minimal pairs distinguished by vowel length alone unlikely to occur in child’s environment – /pua ː / ‘shoal of bonito’ vs /pua/ ‘gardenia’ – /tina ː / ‘mother’ vs /tina/ ‘wedge’ Many minimal pairs come from different lexical classes, – /malu ː / ‘shelter’ is a noun – /malu/ ‘soft’ is an adjective.

19. Form and function of long vowels Long vowels are one unit at the segmental level But they are analysed as a sequence of identical short vowels (two units) for the purpose of stress assignment –(Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992)

20. Stress assignment In most stems stress falls on the penultimate syllable - nonófo ‘sit’ (non singular) - váo ‘forest’ - vaóa ‘be overgrown with weeds’ If the final syllable is a long vowel, stress falls on that vowel - táma ‘boy’ - tamá: ‘father’ - tamá. a ‘father’

21. Observation In terms of learnability there is no clear one to one match between the segmental and the suprasegmental (subsyllabic) levels Very little is known about the interaction between the segmental and suprasegmental although it has been acknowledged as being a factor determining prosodic acquisition. (Kehoe & Stoel-Gammon 199 )

22. Summary The role that long vowels play in Samoan prosodic acquisition complicates their acquisition at the segmental level The lack of minimal pairs that are determined entirely by phonemic length also plays a role The English language environment with its own prosodic system (duration=stress) complicates acquisition even further

23. References Ball, M., Müller, N. and S. Munro 2006 Phonological development and disorder of bilingual children acquiring Welsh and English. In Zhu Hua and Barbara Dodd (eds) Phonological development and disorders in children: a multilingual perspective. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Condax, I. 1990 Locative Accent in Samoan. Oceanic Linguistics 20/1: 27-48 Dodd, B., Holm, A., Hua, Z. and Crosbie,S. 2003 Phonological development: A normative study of British English-speaking children. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 17: 617–643. Goldstein, B. 2007 Spanish speech acquisition. In S. McLeod (Ed.), The International guide to speech acquisition (pp. 539-553). Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.The International guide to speech acquisition Hovdhaugen, E 1992 Phonetic vowel length in Samoan. Oceanic Linguistics 31/2: 281-285

24. Kehoe, M. and Stoel-Gammon, C. Klatt, D. H. 1975. Vowel lengthening is syntactically determined in a connected discourse. Journal of phonetics 3: 129-40 Pawley, A. 1960 An outline of Samoan Phonology. Te Reo 3: 47- 50. Pratt, G. 1862 Samoan dictionary: English and Samoan, and Samoan and English: with a short grammar of the Samoan dialect. Samoa: London Missionary Society’s Press. Statistics New Zealand. 2006. Quick Stats about Culture and Identity. Wellington, Statistics New Zealand. Templin, M. 1957 Certain language skills in children. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Zhu Hua, Dodd B. 2006. Towards developmental universals. In Zhu Hua and Barbara Dodd (eds) Phonological development and disorders in children: a multilingual perspective. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters.