Lexical Conditions on Segment Learning

Theories of phonological processing and of phonological change stress the importance of the word as the structural context of segments in acquisition and historical development, respectively. After a discussion of these theories with reference to a model of second language acquisition, an experiment is reported on in which the pronunciation of four Dutch learners of English was examined. Specifically, they were required to produce a number of known and unknown words from a written list. Examination of the data shows that indeed a model of second language phonological development may be postulated in which the status of the words in which they are embedded as known or unknown is critical for the form of the target segment produced.