Perspectives on Phonological Theory and Development: In Honor of Daniel A. Dinnsen ed. by Ashley W. Farris-Trimble and Jessica A. Barlow (review)

The impact of Daniel Dinnsen’s career on phonological theory, especially in acquisition, is thoroughly illustrated in this collection of chapters presented upon his retirement. Contributors, who include colleagues and former students, represent fields spanning beyond phonology to speech therapy, dialectology, and cognitive psychology. Two major currents are present in the volume: first, the contribution of empirical studies on phonological development to phonological theory; and second, a personal homage to Dinnsen in the form of “statements of the field” touching on those areas influenced by his research. Many chapters deliver on both fronts, while a few adhere more closely to the latter. Phonologists are likely to be this volume’s main audience, and the chapters more directly related to phonology and with greater theoretical contributions will interest this audience the most. In addition, a secondary audience of those touched by or simply interested in Dinnsen’s legacy will find the diversity of chapters a fitting homage to an equally diversified career.

The volume consists of a foreword (with a tabula gratulatoria), an introduction, 11 chapters divided into four major sections, and an author and subject index. The foreword and introduction provide a brief biographical sketch of Dinnsen and his career, including personal details such as favourite classroom sayings and jokes (to which I would humbly add appealing to Superman and Clark Kent to describe complementary distribution).

The first major section centres on speaker competence, namely with respect to the factors influencing morpheme realization or contrast, and contains two chapters. In the first chapter, Demuth summarizes findings in the literature concerning the relationship between prosody and morpheme realization in acquisition. In addition to the typical segmental/syllabic contexts, she discusses the effect of a morpheme’s location in foot and phrasal structure on its form. Prosodically strong positions favour morpheme realization, and she proposes that much of the variability seen in the child acquisition literature may be attributed to the influence of these positions. In the second chapter, Eckman, Iverson and Song investigate the covert contrast between /s/ and /z/ in Spanish-speaking learners of English. In their production study, the authors find evidence that the derived-environment effect holds, even for covert contrasts. That is, only those participants producing the voicing contrast in an underived environment would produce the same contrast inter-morphemically. However, those maintaining an inter-morphemic contrast did so covertly, while their contrast in initial position was overt.

The second section, with three chapters, addresses the issue of variation in child phonology from a variety of viewpoints. In the first chapter, Ingram and Dubasik examine phonological similarity within and across four pairs of children: two pairs of twins (one identical, the other not) and two non-twin sibling pairs (one born two years apart, the other five). Using five measures of phonological similarity, the authors find that the two groups of twins and the first, closer set of siblings show greater similarity than the more distant set of siblings. They argue that closeness of age may account for similarity and also that, since the identical twins showed the highest rate of similarity, genetic factors may be at play (as supported by some previous literature). In the second article, Gierut, Morrisette and Younger examine the number of clinical trials necessary for generalization (i.e., any transfer of learning) in phonologically delayed children. Rather than requiring a certain threshold of correctness, the authors rather examine the instance of first generalization. The authors find that a relatively small average of 185 trials is necessary to induce generalization. Moreover, this generalization applied overwhelmingly to untreated sounds with different manners (i.e., across-class generalization). Finally, Pisoni’s chapter concerns the acquisition of phonological forms by children with Cochlear Implants (CIs). As part of the chapter’s background, Pisoni details the issues facing CI-wearing...