The sociophonetic orientation of the language learner

Labov, William

doi:10.1075/silv.15.01lab

In:Advances in Sociophonetics
Edited by Chiara Celata and Silvia Calamai
[Studies in Language Variation 15] 2014
► pp. 17–28

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The sociophonetic orientation of the language learner

William Labov

Published online: 12 June 2014

https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.15.01lab

This paper is an effort to define the phonetic target of the language learner: what are the data that the child focuses on in becoming a native speaker? A number of studies are reviewed to show that children reject the idiosyncratic features of their parents’ phonetic system if they do not match the pattern of the larger speech community: in the acquisition of the Philadelphia and New York City dialects; the formation of a new dialect in Milton Keynes; the spread of the low back merger in eastern New England; the reduction of the future marker in Tok Pisin. The end result is a high degree of uniformity in both the categorical and variable aspects of language, where individual variation is reduced below the level of linguistic significance.

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