The acquisition of diphthongs by Romanian-speaking children

Abstract

The paper aims to identify the factors that may influence the acquisition of diphthongs (such as their position in the word, the stress on the syllable in which they occur, and the type of diphthong under consideration, i.e. falling or rising), the patterns in diphthong acquisition, as well as to trace a developmental path in between the ages 1;6 and 3 years, given the fact that these vocalic sounds emerge before the age of 2 and seem to be acquired when children turn 3 and a half years of age. To achieve these aims, I have employed six longitudinal corpora of children aged between 00;11.172 and 3;1. The findings indicate that, to a large extent, Romanian-acquiring children pattern with the children speaking other languages in terms of the age of emergence of diphthongs, as well as in diphthong simplification to one of the vowels, but they also differ from these in that they present a larger range of error patterns in diphthong acquisition, as well as inter- and intra-child variation.