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Phonological Development in Child Language

Bachelor Thesis in Cognitive Science

by

Tobias Dominik Rauch

University of Osnabrück, Germany

First Supervisor: Dr. Jochen Trommer

Second Supervisor: Dr. Sabine Reinhardt

19th of October 2003

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Abstract

This thesis is a case study, which examines the phonological processes in the language

of one German child, Jule, between the age of 1;8.28 and 1;9.14 (year;month.day) in

comparison to the adult pronunciation. The focus is especially on consonant harmony

and in how far recent theories are able to explain the findings from Jule's data.

Zusammenfassung

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit den phonologischen Prozessen, die während der

Sprachentwicklung eines deutschen Kindes, Jule, auftreten. Betrachtet und mit der

Erwachsenensprache verglichen wird ihre Sprache im Zeitraum zwischen 1;8.28 und 1;9.14

(Jahr;Monat.Tag). Der Prozess der Konsonanten Harmonie wird genauer beleuchtet und es wird

überprüft, inwiefern die Aussagen der Theorien auf die von Jule gewonnenen Daten passen.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jochen Trommer for his continuous support, his ideas and corrections and

Anna Grimm for allowing me to use her recordings of Jule.

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1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4 1.1. Motivation .................................................................................................................................4 1.2. Outline.......................................................................................................................................4 1.3. German speech sounds and syllable structure ...........................................................................5

1.3.1. Syllable structure in German: ...............................................................................................5 1.3.2. The sonority sequencing generalization: ..............................................................................6

2. Method and material .............................................................................................................. 8 2.1. Participants ................................................................................................................................8 2.2. Data collection...........................................................................................................................8 2.3. Data transcription ......................................................................................................................8 2.4. Data description.........................................................................................................................9

2.4.1. Deletions at the onset of a syllable .....................................................................................10 2.4.2. Deletions in the rhyme of a syllable ..................................................................................11 2.4.3. Deletion of the first syllable ...............................................................................................13 2.4.4. Changes in the manner of articulation ................................................................................14 2.4.5. Changes in the place of articulation....................................................................................15 2.4.6. Changes in vowels ..............................................................................................................17 2.4.7. Other cases.........................................................................................................................17

3. General description of Jule's language................................................................................. 20 3.1. Syllables ..................................................................................................................................20

3.1.1. Frequency of Syllables .......................................................................................................20 3.1.2. Syllable structure ................................................................................................................20

3.2. Changes in articulation............................................................................................................23 3.3. Assimilations ...........................................................................................................................24

4. Recent theories for consonant development in child phonology ........................................ 25 4.1. A local connectionist account of consonant harmony in child language.................................26 4.2. Typology and variation in child consonant harmony ..............................................................30

5. Conclusion and discussion................................................................................................... 33 5.1. Applicability of the theories to Jule's language .......................................................................33

5.1.1. A local connectionist account of consonant harmony in child language ............................33 5.1.2. Typology and variation in child consonant harmony .........................................................34

5.2. Conclusion...............................................................................................................................35 5.3. Outlook....................................................................................................................................35

References ................................................................................................................................... 36

Appendix A: ................................................................................................................................ 37

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1. Introduction

1.1. Motivation

"An instinct to acquire an art" – the title of the first chapter in Steven Pinker's book

"The language instinct" (1994) describes language acquisition very well. Language is an

art, which needs a long time to be mastered. Apart form other things, children acquire

during its development the phonological inventory of their mother tongue. Jakobson

(1968/1941) claimed that this phonological acquisition follows an innately determined

order and Stampe (1969) suggested that children start the learning process with innate

limitations on phonetic capacity and a number of natural phonological processes to deal

with those limitations. Over time, these processes are suppressed by the exposure to the

surrounding language. Some phonologists did and do not totally agree with the

applicability of adult phonological theories to child data. (e.g. Waterson,1971; Menn,

1976, 1983) They follow a more developmentally oriented research approach to account

for the differences between child an adult language. Other phonologists (Bernhard &

Stemberger, 1998) argue, that differences between child and adult language generally

reflect the relative frequency of particular patterns or features. An example for this is

consonant harmony, which is relatively frequent in early child phonology, but rare in

adult phonology. This process could also be observed in the language of the German

child, Jule, whose language I have examined. The aim of my study was to describe the

phonological processes observable in her language from age 1;8.28 to 1;9.14 and to

examine by the use of one example process, in this case consonant harmony, to which

extent selected recent theories are able to cope with the material collected from Jule's

data.

1.2. Outline

This paper is divided into five sections, to make the reader familiar with the examined

language, German, a short summary about speech sounds and syllable structure in

German can be found in this section. The different processes observable in Jule's

language are described in section 2 and a overview of general preferences in Jule's

language is the topic of section 3. Two of recent theories dealing with consonant

harmony are introduced in section 4. Section 5 covers the findings about the

transferability of the theories to the data of Jule and a final outlook.

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1.3. German speech sounds and syllable structure

The following chart shows the consonants common in most native German dialects. The

first column indicates the manner of articulation, the place of articulation is indicated in

the first row. The glottal stop �� is not part of the German orthography. It is always

pronounced in front of a word-initial vowel and in some cases it appears word-internally

at the beginning of a syllable.

bilabial

labio- dental

alveolar post- alveolar

palatal velar glottal

plosive �� affricate � �� fricative � �� nasal �� lateral � � �� vibrant � � � � � �� glide � � � � ��

Figure 1 (Hall, 2000)

front

central

back

high

middle

low Figure 2 (Hall, 2000)

Apart from the vowels shown in Figure 2, standard German has the three diphthongs

�� , �� and��. More about German speech sounds can be found in Wängler

(1981), or Kohler (1995).

1.3.1. Syllable structure in German:

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The syllable is a phonological unit, which groups sounds together. Today most

phonologists accept the syllable as an important phonological unit and the domain for

various laws. Different models about the structure of a syllable exist, here I will focus

on the theory found in Hall (2000) which states that a syllable can be divided into an

onset and a rhyme, which consists of a nucleus and a coda. The following example

shows the German word Silbe (syllable) which is composed of two syllables.

In this example the first syllable ends in a consonant and is therefore called "closed",

the second is an "open" syllable, which ends by definition with a vowel.

The grouping of segments into syllables follows certain universal preferences (Hall,

2000). Nevertheless, languages differ in the number of consonants allowed in the onset

and coda. German allows zero up to three consonants in the onset and zero to four

consonants in the coda. The construction of syllables is based on the principle of

markedness – marked structures and elements are less preferred and occur in fewer

languages than their unmarked counterparts.

1.3.2. The sonority sequencing generalization:

Another important phonotactic principle is the sonority sequencing generalization

(Selkirk, 1984a). Sonority is assumed to be an auditory factor, more sonorous sounds

are more easily perceived for the listener. The sonority sequencing generalization states,

that the elements before the most sonorous segment, which is called the peak of the

syllable, increase in sonority, and the element after the peak decrease in sonority.

Vowels are the most sonorous sounds. In consonants the sonority decreases from liquids

over nasals to obstruents.

�

Onset Rhyme

Nucleus Coda

��

�

Onset Rhyme

Nucleus

��

Figure 3

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A lot of phonologists argue that the sonority sequencing generalization is universally

valid. Nevertheless, well-formed words which violate this principle exist. Examples are

German words like �� (stone)�or ��(pigs). Both words start with two

obstruents, which have the same sonority value. To account for these words, the concept

of extra-syllabic consonants was introduced. Extra-syllabic consonants are not grouped

to the unit of the syllable and therefore cannot violate the sonority sequencing

generalization, if the have the same sonority value as the consonant in the onset of the

following syllable. (Giegerich, 1992; Hall, 1992)

The construction of a syllable follows preferences. If possible, they are not violated, but

there are situations in which more than one preference applies to a certain consonant.

This is the case for ambi-syllabic consonants. The following example shows the

German word �� (tractor), in which /k/ seems to be a part of the coda of the first

and a part of the onset of the second syllable. The concept of ambi-syllabic consonant

describes this phenomenon (Ramers, 1991; Wiese, 1996).

.

�

Onset Rhyme

� ��

�

Onset Rhyme

��

Figure 5

�

Onset Rhyme

Nucleus Coda

��

Appendix

��Figure 4

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2. Method and material

2.1. Participants

In my study, I have examined the language of Jule, born on 12th of July 2001. Jule is

living in a middle class environment in Wallenhorst, a village near Osnabrück. Her

parents are monolingual and both from northern parts of Germany. They have a nearly

standard German pronunciation, dialectal influences are therefore neglect able.

Crucial factors like hearing ability, cognitive and motor development, physical health

and characteristics of pregnancy and childbirth were checked by a questionnaire, which

was filled out by the parents. This questionnaire and all the recordings I have used were

done by Angela Grimm.1

2.2. Data collection

The recordings took place in the child home in presence of the mother and the

investigator. The recordings I used were taken on the 10th of April, the 5th, 12th, 19th and

26th of May 2003. They had an average length of 35 minutes. The speech samples were

recorded on a SONY DAT-recorder and a highly sensitive SONY microphone. During

the recording session, the microphone was placed in front of the child while it was

playing with toys or looking at picture books. If the child moved trough the room, the

position of the microphone was suited as well. The parents were asked to remove

chattering or crackling toys and to avoid conversational overlaps, because the utterances

were examined phonetically.

Jule was asked to name figures of animals like Papagei "parrot", Krokodil "crocodile",

Elefant "elephant", Giraffe "giraffe" and names of selected fruits or vegetables like

Banane "banana", Tomate "tomato" and Salat "salad".

2.3. Data transcription

The data collection took place in several steps. The recordings were copied from the

DAT- Recorder onto a computer by using the CoolEdit™ program2 . Having the data as

a file on the PC was a big advantage, mainly because searching of words and the

repeated listening to segments was much easier with the visualised data compared to the

work with a DAT-cassette. The recordings were transcribed carefully, which made it

necessary for me to listen to them a couple of times. The first listening was merely for

1 Thanks to Angela Grimm for allowing me to use her recordings. 2 http://www.adobe.com/special/products/audition/syntrillium.html

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writing down the words Jule attempted to say. As a second step, I used a dictionary

(Breitsprecher, 2001) to write down the phonetic transcriptions for every word. Not-

indicated diphthongs and glottal stops omitted by the dictionary were later added

according to the standard transcription of German. As a third step, I listened to the

recordings again and wrote down the phonetic transcriptions of Jules utterances. They

were transcribed according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) from 1993. The

phonetic transcription of Jule's utterances, the indented words and their transcriptions as

well as the arrangement of vowels and consonants and the number of syllables for each

word were stored in a database3.

Jule's words were written down using a broad transcription. Focussing not on the

phonetic implementation, but on phonological processes made it not necessary for me to

account for all the phonetic details in Jule's language. Words starting with voiceless

plosives are thus transcribed by me as �� in contrast to �� in a narrow transcription.

2.4. Data description

My intention was to describe the differences between the normal speech of an adult and

the speech of Jule. The following tree gives an overview of the differences between

Jule's and adult language.

The left branch focuses on the syllable as a phonological unit. Like the word and the

morpheme, it is a domain for various phonological laws and can be used to explain

some of the processes, which take place in Jule's speech.

3 http://www.microsoft.com/office/excel/default.asp

Phonological processes in Jule's language

Deletions Changes in

the Manner of Articulation

the Place of Articulation

of a Syllable Vowels in the Rhyme in the Onset

in the Nucleus in the Coda

Consonants

Figure 6

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The right branch focuses on the changes in place and manner of articulation and the

changes occurring to vowels.

The grouping into the two branches is especially matched onto Jule's speech and the

frequency of errors that occur. Other groupings are possible. Stemberger & Bernhard

(1998), for example, focus on individual place, manner and laryngeal features organized

according to feature geometry. Due to the limitations of my data example utterances

could not be found for all features. To provide an appropriate grouping, I used the

categories given in Figure 6.

In the examples4 I will give, the utterances of Jule are given in square brackets ("[", "]"),

the standard German pronunciation in slashes ("/", "/") and the translation in English in

brackets ("(" , ")"). Where relevant, syllable borders are marked with a dot.

2.4.1. Deletions at the onset of a syllable

The construction of the onset of a syllable follows two preferences:

1. �[CV is less marked than �[V.

�[ marks the onset of a syllable, C is a consonant and V is a vowel

2. �[CnV is less marked than �[Cn+1V

Figure 7 (Hall,2000)

These preferences provide a general statement about the markedness of syllable onsets

and motivate some changes in Jule's speech compared to the standard adult German.

The combination of consonant-vowel is the least marked onset structure, whereas the

more consonants can be found in the onset, the more marked is the syllable. The

reduction of the onset structure to the consonant- vowel construction is therefore in line

with these preferences, but they cannot explain, why the consonants ��, �� and ��

are preferably omitted by Jule. The sonority sequencing generalization gives hints to

account for the omission of the consonants listed above.

1) deletion of ��

- �� (dress)

- �� ! ��(foot)

4 Due to the number of words, I will not write down all possible examples, but give a small set of examples for each phenomena. The interested reader can have a look at all the words I used in my study in the appendix.

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The onset of two consonants is reduced to an onset with one consonant in both

examples. The obstruents�� and ��are kept and the liquid ��is deleted.

Obstruents are on a lower level in the sonority hierarchy than liquids, furthermore,

tendencies to increase the contrast in sonority within a syllable exist, which would argue

for the deletion of ��. By this the contrast between the onset of the syllable and the

nucleus would be maximal.


- ��"��"��(pigs)

- �� (tail)

- ��#!��#!��(sport)

- �� (stone)

The examples above are all words which start with two obstruents, a combination which

is not in line with the sonority sequencing principle. If we assume that the sonority

sequencing principle is universally valid and given the fact that the examples are all

well-formed words in German, this construction can only be motivated with the concept

of extra-syllabic consonants. Normally all consonants are part of the syllable and

therefore constructions including extra-syllabic consonants are more marked. Marked

elements are acquired later by children, which argues for the omission of the extra-

syllabic part of the word. These arguments motivate the preference of Jule to omit the

fricative ��"

2.4.2. Deletions in the rhyme of a syllable

The rhyme of a syllable consist of the nucleus and the coda. The nucleus is the most

sonorous element in a syllable. In German, vowels and sonorants (��, ��, ��) can

act as nucleus and zero to five consonants are allowed in the coda.

The preferences for the nucleus are:

1. Syllables with sonorants as a nucleus are more marked than those with vowels.


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In Jule's speech, some examples for syllables with nasals as nucleus can be found. In all

of these cases the standard transcription for these words includes the Schwa ��

followed by the nasal ��"

4) change of nucleus

- ��#!"��#!"�� (up)

- ��"��!"�� (to have)

- �� (to watch)

It is very common in standard German to omit the �� and use the following nasal as

the nucleus of last syllable of a word. It is therefore a question of transcription, whether

Jule changes the nucleus from ��to �� or utters the words correctly. It is most likely

that her parents have only made use of the syllabic ��as a nucleus, which would

argue for the correctness of Jule's utterances.

The preferred coda constructions can be described in two statements:

1. CVCn] � is less marked than CVCn+1] �

] � marks the end of a syllable

2. The least marked Syllable ends in a vowel, which is called an open syllable. A

syllable ending in a vowel is called closed.


These preferences motivate, why Jule prefers to omit consonants at the coda of a

syllable. At the coda��and �� are most frequently deleted.


- ��"��"�� (apple)

- ��!"��!"�� (fork)

- ��"��"�� (bumblebee)

- ��!"��!"�� (donkey)

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Jule is very consistent in deleting the �� at the end of a syllable. Out of the 15 words in

her inventory, only in 2 words is the �� maintained. These words are

�� $� �� and ��. Closed syllables are transformed into more

preferred open ones in most of the cases.


- �� (child)

-�� (dog)�

-��#!��#!�� (moon)�

Fewer consonant in the coda make a syllable less marked, which is always preferred. In

about 60% of all pronunciations of words ending in the combination of consonant and

��Jule did not pronounce the last obstruent ��"

2.4.3. Deletion of the first syllable

In some words a whole syllable is deleted instead of changing parts of it. This process

primarily takes place in tri-syllabic words, where the first, unstressed syllable is nearly

always deleted:

8) deletion of first syllable

- ��!"�� /�#"��"�� (tomato)

- ��"��"��"�� (banana)

- ��#"�� $"��"�� (giraffe)

9) deletion of the first two syllables

- [��"��"�� (elephant)

- [�$��#"�$"�� (policeman)

The former two examples are the only ones, where the first two syllables are deleted.

The stress is in both examples on the last syllable.

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10) deletion of first syllable

-��%��"�%��(gallop)

- ��!�� "��(salad)

- ��$!��"�$!��(dolphin)

- ��"��(broken)

The deletion of a syllable is not the most frequently occurring process in di-syllabic

words, but it shows, that the targeted syllables for deletion are in Jule's speech always

unstressed.

2.4.4. Changes in the manner of articulation

The most frequent change in the manner of articulation is the Substitution of Fricatives

by Plosives.

11) substitution of fricatives

-��"��"�� (fishes)

- �� (to fall)

- ��%��%��(sun)

- �� (goose)

An explanation for this process can be found, if we look at a comparison of languages

by Madison (1984). All languages described by him have at least on plosive, whereas

93% of them have fricatives. Most of the languages have fewer fricatives than plosives,

which suggests that plosives are less marked and therefore preferred.

Another evidence for the preference of plosives can be found, if we examine the

distribution of the three German affricates �� , ��und �� .

12) substitution of ��

- ��!�� (horse)

- ��"��(apple)

- ��&��'��(to jump)

- ��'"�� '�� (socks)

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Two different patterns can be observed in these examples: If the affricate ��is at the

beginning of the word, it is realized as ��, if it is within a word it is realized as ��.

The first process is common among most of the German dialects, which accounts for the

realization of ��as ��. The second process replaces the ambi-syllabic �� by a

�� belonging to the onset of the second syllable. Although these processes can be

found in all of Jule's words containing the affricate ��, no general law can be derived

from these examples. There is only one word, which starts with ��, and all other

occurrences of ��are ambi-syllabic and within a word.

13) affricate replacement

- �� (cat)

- �� (mushrooms)

- �� (tail)

In 80% of the cases the affricate �� is replaced by its plosive component ��, other

substitutions only occur in the word�� !��. These substitutions include �� (6

times), �� (twice) �� (once). In contrast to the affricate ��, �� and �� are

replaced by a plosive in all word positions. Though it is to note, that there is one

example, where Jule changes �� into the affricate ��:��

14) affricate insertion

- ��!�� (sleigh)

15) affricate replacement

- ��#!"�� (slide)

��is replaced by its plosive component ��, which is similar to the process

occurring to the other affricates.

2.4.5. Changes in the place of articulation

A process often observed in Jule's language is the substitution of velars by coronals. In

standard German, there are only three velars: ��,�� and ��. In Jule's data, changes

involving velars occur in all word positions but differ in frequency.

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16) change from velar to coronal

- ��!�� !�� (crane)

- ��"��!�� (cat)

- �� (money)

The initial velar is changed to a coronal sound, in these cases to an alveolar plosive. The

process in which elements take on features occurring in later elements of the word is

called regressive assimilation. This can be observed in the given examples. In Jule's

inventory there exist eighteen words, which have their initial velar changed to a coronal

sound. Still, this is not a change occurring at all times. The majority of words (twenty-

seven) keeps the initial velar.

17) no change in initial velar

-�#"��(�"�� (corn)

- �� (grass)

Word internally, velars are more often changed into coronal sounds. Only in 11 out of

27 words remains the velar unchanged. It should noted, that �� is word-internally

always changed.

18) change in word-intern velar

- ��#!"��'��(bridge)

- ��"�� (tractor)

- � !"�� (cucumber)

- � !"�� !�� (cake)

The velar �� is changed to an alveolar sound in all of the cases above. This can be

motivated by progressive assimilation in the first two examples. The stop sound ��

assimilates to the place feature of �� or �� ( bilabial or alveolar). In addition to that,

the [k] is an ambi-syllabic consonant which belongs to both syllables. Like extra-

syllabic consonants, the concept of ambi-syllabic consonants is used to motivate

exceptions to the normal case. This argues for the markedness of ambi-syllabic

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consonant, which motivates why Jule prefers to substitute ambi-syllabic structures in a

word with more defined structures.

19) word final changes in velar sounds

-��#!��(castle)

- �� (as well)

Although there are only a couple of words in Jule's inventory which end in velar sounds,

the findings mentioned above underline these findings. The velars are either changed to

coronal sounds, which happens in the majority of times, or entirely deleted, which

occurs only in ��- though in half of its pronunciations.

2.4.6. Changes in vowels

Although I will mainly focus on consonants, some examples for trends in vowel

changes in Jule's language are listed below.

20) �� is changed to ��

- ��(ape)

- ��(unscathered)

- ��(cheese)��

�

At the end of the word �� is often changed to ��.

21) �� is changed to ��

-�� (dove)

- �� (pitcher)

�� is changed to �� at the end of the word. 11) and 12) can be interpreted as such, that

the Schwa is not preferred and is substituted if possible.

2.4.7. Other cases

There are some processes, which can be observed only in very few words of Jule's

inventory, but are still very interesting. These are vowel harmony and metathesis.

18

22) vowel harmony

- �%��%��##�$!��(crocodile)

- �%��%��

- �%��

The first example is close to adult language, as seen in other examples, �� is not

pronounced and �#� and �� are changed into the diphthong ��. This vowel spreads

throughout the word, which is called vowel harmony. Due to the low number of

occurrences, it is not possible to say, whether the second example is just a repetition of

the third example or a change of the word. Similar processes can be found in the

following examples:

23) vowel harmony

- �� (parrot)

- ��

- ��

Only �� is fully assimilated to �� in the first example, whereas in the second

example, the first syllable is omitted, �� assimilates to the unvoiced �� and turns into

��. The vowel �� is changed to the diphthong �� and vowel harmony occurs.

24) metathesis

- ��$��$#� (radio)

This is one of the very few examples for metathesis in Jule's speech. The vowel �#�

changes its place and is combined with �� to the diphthong �� .

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25) The �� sound:

- �� (barbeque)

- ��#��#!�� (bread)

- ��"��(tractor)

-��!"��!�"�� (to become)

- �� (tower)

All of the examples presented above contain the ��sound in the adult pronunciation.

Neither in the onset nor the coda of a syllable can the ��sound be found in Jule's

speech. Although the sonority hierarchy is able to motivate changes in onset and coda,

the absence of �� is consistent in Jule's language, which suggests that she has not yet

mastered it.

25)

- �� !�� %��(airplane)

This example is special, because a lot phonological processes take place in it. The

affricate is changed into the plosive ��, both occurrences of �� are omitted, the onset

is reduced to one consonant, which is fully assimilated to �� and the last vowel is

changed into an ��, which might be a general preference. The result is a word

consisting of two open syllables, both beginning with a coronal plosive. This reflects the

preference of Jule for open syllables and coronal sounds.

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3. General description of Jule's language

3.1. Syllables

3.1.1. Frequency of Syllables

During the recordings on which this examination is based, Jule made use of 241

different types of words. The table below shows the frequency of Jule's utterances

divided into mono-, di-, tri- and quadri-syllabic words.

types tokens

mono-syllabic words 93 541

disyllabic words 131 320

tri-syllabic word 13 22

quadri-syllabic words 4 9

241 892

Figure 10

The group of disyllabic words is the most diverse one, it consists of 131 different types,

which occur altogether 320 times. The second most diverse group are the mono-syllabic

words. With 541 tokens they are most frequently used by Jule, which can be explained

by the occurrences of words like ��, �� , �� and �� . These are short words,

often consisting of an optimal syllable – which starts in a consonant and ends with a

vowel. Tri-syllabic words make the third largest group. Although quanta-syllabic words

can be found in Jule's inventory, too little data exist to make general predictions.

3.1.2. Syllable structure

The onset in Jule's inventory is consistent with the theories about preferences in syllable

structure. According to these theories, an onset consisting of only one consonant is very

unmarked. Nearly all words in Jule's inventory start with one consonant, the exceptions

are ��"��!��(sleigh) and ��"�� /�� (sound of the duck).

The following tables show the distribution of consonants in the word types and tokens

in Jule's language. The number of types might add up to a greater number than the total

number of word types in Jule's inventory. Different pronunciations of word types5 were

counted as different types in this case, which account for the greater number. 5 �� vs. �� (dog)

21

Number of consonants in the onset – word initially 0 1 2 3 types 0 239 1 1 tokens 0 890 1 1

Figure 11

Number of consonants in the onset – word internally 0 1 2 3 types 5 144 1 0 tokens 18 372 1 0

Figure 12

Word internally, only one syllable starts with two consonants. It can be found in the

word ��"��"��#"��"��"�"��#!"�� (to continue flying).

The only syllable with no consonants in the onset consists of the vowel [�] and is

always unstressed. Examples are ��"��"�� (farmer) and ��"��"��

(eggs).

Number of consonants in the coda – word end 0 1 2 3 types 141 128 24 0 tokens 483 355 54 0

Figure 13

The biggest group, 141 types and 485 tokens, are the syllables ending in a vowel, which

is in line with the theories about markedness in the coda. The second biggest group

consists of the syllables ending in one consonant. This group is only a little bit smaller,

128 types and 353 tokens. The large number can be explained by the very frequent use

of short words like [��, �� and �� "These words make up 296 tokens. The

other tokens are syllables like ��"�� (broken) or words like ��!��!��

(horse).

The group of words ending in two consonants is relatively small, but can be divided into

subgroups.

words ending in t: � �� Σ�types 7 1 1 1 10 token 28 8 1 1 38

Figure 14

22

52% of the words end with the combination of ��" Like the combination of ��/, this

is a sonorant–obstruent construction. The combination of sonorant and obstruent shows

a decline in sonority, which is line with the sonority sequencing generalization.

words ending in n: � �� Σ�types 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 10 token 3 1 3 2 1 1 1 2 14

Figure 15

In German nasals and liquids can be syllabic, which means that they can take on the role

of the nucleus. This happens often at the end of words after ��, which is omitted.

Syllabic consonants are transcribed as ��&� and Jule makes in 10 out of 14 tokens use of

it instead of the ending ��, which leads to the assumption that this is the normal case.

Number of consonants in the coda – word internally 0 1 2 3 types 107 8 0 0 tokens 266 8 0 0

Figure 16

Word internally, open syllables (ending in a vowel) are the most common ones in Jule's

speech. They occur 266 times in 107 different words.

As a conclusion from the findings concerning syllable structure, it can be said, that

Jule's utterances show the preferences given by the sonority sequencing generalization.

Open syllables are word internally and at the word end the largest group. The most

preferred syllable of Jule is the optimal syllable #CV#. The second most used syllable is

#CVC# and the majority of words ending in two consonants illustrate the decline in

sonority by the combination of sonorant and obstruent.

The following table lists total the number of occurrences of syllable types in the data

collected from Jule's utterances. (#CV.CV.CV# was counted as three syllables of the

type #CV#)

syllables CV CVC CCV CVV CCVC CVCC CVVC CCCV V total

occurrences 810 366 1 20 1 53 7 1 24 1283

percentages 63,1% 28,5% 0,1% 1,6% 0,1% 4,1% 0,5% 0,1% 1,9% 100%

Figure 17

23

3.2. Changes in articulation

Certain changes in the manner or place of articulation can be observed in Jule's speech.

The most striking ones can be found in the data description in part II.5. One of the often

occurring changes is the substitution of fricatives by plosives. The preference for

plosives can be seen in the replacement of the affricates. �� is always changed to it

plosive counterpart ��. �� is in all but one case changed into �� and the affricate

�� is always changed into ��.

Another interesting change is the substitution of velar by coronal sounds. Word

internally, velar sounds are in more than half of the words changed into coronal sounds.

Word finally, velars are either changed into coronal sounds as well, or entirely deleted.

The only exception is ��, which keeps the final velar in half of the tokens.

The following table lists the German consonants and the number of word tokens it

occurs in. The numbers are listed below the consonants.

bilabial

labio- dental

alveolar post- alveolar

palatal velar glottal

plosive �� 70, 76 233, 219 60, 70 174 affricate � �� 0 0 1, 0 fricative � �� 68, 31 184, 24 8, 0 3 10 80 nasal �� 91 149 0 lateral � � �� 52 vibrant � � � � � �� 0 glide � � � � �� 25

Figure 18

It can be seen, that plosives make the largest group in terms of manner of articulation,

whereas the focus in the place of articulation is around coronal sounds, e.g. alveolar.�

24

3.3. Assimilations

Coronal harmony is the most frequent type of assimilation in Jule's speech. Progressive

assimilation is preferred over regressive assimilation by Jule. Velars assimilate to

coronals in almost all the cases, if they are preceded by a coronal sounds. Labials

assimilate to nearly the same extend in progressive and regressive harmony. Notice, that

in all these cases a back vowel is located between the assimilating consonants.

Assimilation takes place as well in terms of manner of articulation. Fricatives assimilate

in 65% to plosives, whereas plosives never assimilate to fricatives.

As coronal harmony is the most frequent type of harmony, it seemed necessary to me to

examine it in greater detail. Therefore I extracted all words of the shape

C1(C)V1(C)C2(C)(V)(C) from Jule's inventory and sorted them into groups based on the

place of articulation of C1, C2 and V1. ( T, K, P = coronal, velar, labial consonant, O, I =

back, front vowel)

The following table shows the percentage of harmonized forms in these groups.

Attested Frequencies of Occurrence of Coronal Harmony progressive harmony regressive harmony TOP TIP TOK TIK PIT POT KOT KIT percent harmonized 14% 0% 100% 86% 0% 12% 0% 15%

Figure19

Two important things can be deduced from this table:

1. Progressive assimilation of velars to coronals is a very common process.

2. Regressive occurs less than progressive assimilation.

25

4. Recent theories for consonant development in child phonology

Consonant harmony is a phenomenon often observed in Jule's speech. In consonant

harmony, a child makes two consonants more similar to each other, than they are in

adult speech. It occurs in a variety of languages, which suggests, that it is not bound to

the structure of a specific language. This is why many authors, who have examined the

process of consonant harmony have tried to account for it by the use of different

theories. In this section, I will introduce two different theories which try to account for

the processes occurring in consonant harmony. Berg & Schade (2000) made use of a

network to model the assimilations which take place, whereas Pater & Werle (2001)

used grammars consisting of fixed ranked constraints.

Normally, the child assimilates segments which are either not preferred or in not

preferred combinations. Elements which cannot be produced by children are also often

assimilated, if not omitted completely.

Different types of consonant harmony can be distinguished. The first possibility to

distinguish harmony types is to take a closer look at the assimilating elements.

If the element takes on all the features of the assimilating element, the process is called

complete harmony, because the two elements become identical6. ��

If the child adjusts only some features of the elements, the process is called partial

harmony. For example only the place of articulation is changed in elements, but the

manner of articulation remains unchanged7.

Another possibility to distinguish harmony types is by looking at the number of types

used. If children make only use of e.g. coronal harmony, it is called singleton harmony,

if they use e.g. coronal harmony in some words and e.g. bilabial harmony in others, it is

described as multiple harmony.

6 e.g. �� $)�� $)� (/d/ is fully assimilated to /p/) 7 e.g. ��$�� $� (/n/ is takes on the bilabial feature and assimilates to /m/)

26

4.1. A local connectionist account of consonant harmony in child

language

The authors (Berg & Schade, 2000) describe a information-processing model based on

psycholinguistic models of Stemberger (1985) and Dell (1986).

The underlying concepts of a local connectionist model should be explained in advance.

Connectionism is a computational paradigm, which takes its inspiration originally from

the biological neuron and neurological organization. It emphasizes collections of simple

processing units, which are inter-connected and can relay activation onto each other.

Three types of neurons can be distinguished: input- , hidden- and output-neurons.

Whereas input and output neurons are necessary for a network, hidden units can be used

to do extra calculations. Connections between units have certain weights, which can be

changed by training to e.g. store or classify information. The exchange of information

occurs largely in parallel (Rumelhard & McClelland, 1986).

Figure 20

Connectionist models can be divided into distributed and localist models. In distributed

representations concepts are not captured by a single node, but by a pattern of activation

spread out over the network. In localist models, each node represents one concept,

which is the case in this approach.

27

It is characterized by its close correlation to the psycholinguistic model, which captures

the hierarchical structure of language. A word can be divided into phonological

segments, which can by itself be characterized by features. A multilevel representation

must therefore minimally consist of a syllable, a segment and a feature level. The

production of a linguistic unit is guaranteed by its selection from a number of

simultaneously active competitors. The node, which receives the strongest activation is

selected and is able to pass the information onto an arbitrary number of nodes at the

next level. Afterwards the activation of this node is momentarily set to zero, to prevent

the node from being selected over and over again. This process is called self-inhibition.

Figure 21 (Berg & Schade, 2000) The flow of activation and inhibition at the moment of onset selection in the word Leber. Solid lines signal a strong, dashed lines a medium and dotted lines a weak flow of activation.

Figure 21 explains these principles. While �� is about to be selected, the other

segments receive activation as well, though to a lesser extend. The authors assume, that

the connection between �� and lateral is insufficiently developed. The feature lateral

does not receive enough activation for production. The uttered word is in this case

��!��*��!��*��(liver)

An explanation for this case is given by underspecification (Stemberger & Stoel-

Gammon, 1991). According to them, �� is unspecified for [lateral] in the underlying

representation, which makes it more prone to adopting feature from nearby elements, in

"Leber"

/l/ /e!/� /b/� /�/� /r/�

voiced

alveolar bilabial

stop lateral

28

this case [bilabial]. Underspecification can be interpreted in terms of activational terms

as �� having more feature-nodes and therefore receives more information than ��"�

The differences between adult and children production of language and a large part of

learning can, according to Berg & Schade, be captured by the examination of the links

in the network. Adult and child language differ in the change of connection weights

rather then in representational aspects such as number of levels. Children start of with

connection weights around zero and change them by comparing the production results

to the perceptual representation. During the adjustment of the links between nodes only

three types of errors can occur:

- hypoactivation: the children's connections between elements and their features

e.g. �� and [velar] are too weak

- hyperactivation: the children's connections between elements and their features

e.g. �� and [alveolar] are too strong

- impaired self-inhibition: a node is selected over and over again

As children start with connection weights around zero, hypoactivation is supposed to

account for the majority of error. Only when children's connections have reached the

optimal weight and the connection strength is still increasing, hyperactivation can take

place.

Although Berg & Schade (2000) examined various types of consonant harmonies, I will

only describe the simulation of singleton harmony to explain the functioning of the

network.

It contains a word, a syllable, a segment and a feature level, which each consist of a

number of nodes. The output of the network is identified by the activation pattern at the

feature level, namely the most activated voice, place and manner nodes. Errors occur, if

the output of the segment level is not identical with the output of the feature level. For

example: The most activated element in the segment level is /d/, but the most activated

features are [voiced], [bilabial] and [stop], which together form /b/.

Singleton harmony was examined in a network with standard (adult-like) conditions, a

network with hyperlinks and one with hypolinks. Each network was tested with high

and low noise and 100 simulation were run for each noise condition. To account for

singleton harmony, the connection strength between bilabial segments and the bilabial

feature was increased.

29

The results of the simulations with the words cap can be found in the following table:

Standard Hyperlinks Hypolinks Noise Level: Low High Low High Low High Correct: cap

99 62 - 1 - 1

Anticipation: pap - 32 100 99 100 99 Exchange: pack

1 6 - - - -

Preserveration: cack - - - - - -

Figure 22 (Berg & Schade, 2000)

The first two columns show the results for the Standard network, the next two columns

show the results for a network with hyperlinks from bilabial segments to the feature

[bilabial] and the last two columns show the results for a network with Hypolinks from

the non-bilabial segments to their place features. Each network was tested with two

noise conditions (low, high).

The results for the production of pack are shown in the next table.

Standard Hyperlinks Hypolinks Noise Level: Low High Low High Low High Correct: pack

99 74 100 99 100 99

Anticipation: cack 1 19 - - - - Exchange: cap

6 7 - - - -

Preserveration: pap - - - 1 - 1

Figure 23 (Berg & Schade, 2000)

Both hyperactivation and hypoactivation lead to the same results. To make more precise

predictions, simulations with tap and cat were done with a low noise condition.

Findings from these simulations suggest, that hyperactivation leads to the correct

production of words lacking bilabial segments and leads to harmony in words with

bilabial segments. It is therefore favoured by Berg & Schade as an account for the

changes in this case.

Further simulations were done for the various types of harmonies mentioned in the

beginning of this part. The aim of the study (Berg & Schade, 2000) was to identify the

psycholinguistic mechanism that underlie consonant harmony. Not all mechanism were

found to be equally important. Hyperactivation was found to be more important in

30

other areas than consonant harmony. Impaired-self inhibition was observed to play a

minor role. It is likely to be fixed before phonological development is in full swing, due

to its general effect.

4.2. Typology and variation in child consonant harmony

The authors (Pater & Werle, 2001) proposed an account for consonant harmony in

child phonology by the use of grammars consisting of fixed ranked constraints. The

three typological generalizations, directionality, target place and vowel blocking were

examined on the basis of data from a child learning American English. (Trevor,

Compton and Streeter 1977, Pater 1997).

For the study, all initially stressed adult forms of the shape C1(C)V1(C)C2(C)(V)(C)

were extracted and sorted into 8 groups based on the place of articulation of C1 and C2

and the place for V1 ( T, K, P = coronal, velar, labial consonant, O, I = back, front

vowel).

For the period to 1;5 and for every month till 2;3 the authors measured the proportion of

harmonized vs. non-harmonized forms, by which they defined stages and constructed

grammars to model the attested frequencies of harmony in these stages.

The authors make use of ideas about constraints from the Optimality Theory (Prince &

Smolensky, 1993). This theory is based on tendencies in the languages of the world,

their interactions and conflicts. These tendencies can be expressed by constraints, which

are simple statements or restrictions about a specific aspect of the surface form. Prince

and Smolensky introduced the idea, that constraints are rank able especially for every

language and can be violated. In the optimal ranking, only a few and low ranked

constraints are violated. This is known as minimal violation.

Three constraints are used for the modelling of consonant harmony:

• AGREE: Consonants in the domain, for the child the domain is the word, must

agree in place specification.

• FAITH(X): The input place feature X is preserved in the output. (LAB: labial,

DOR: velar, COR: coronal) The authors propose the following ranking for the

generalization that assimilation of non-coronals implies assimilation of coronals

(Kiparsky, 1994): FAITH(LAB) >> FAITH(COR)

The authors assume that FAITH(DOR) always dominates FAITH(LAB); this is

why they leave FAITH(DOR) out of further discussions.

31

• NO-GAP: feature-linked segments must be adjacent at the root node level.

The following table shows an example for a grammar, which targets only coronals for

assimilation.

�� FAITH(LAB) AGREE FAITH(COR) a. � �� * b. �� *!

Figure 24 (Pater &Werle, 2001)

Pater & Werle replace the total constraint ranking of OT with a partially ranked

grammar (Antilla, 1997) to account for variation. At any given output evaluation time, a

totally ordered grammar, which is compatible with the partially ordered one, is

randomly generated. The various output form correspond to the fully ranked grammar

by principles of probability.

To account for differences between regressive and progressive assimilation, the authors

made use of the constraints AGREE-L and AGREE-R. They observed, that AGREE-L

always dominates AGREE-R. Regressive assimilation can be modelled by the constraint

AGREE-L >> FAITH >> AGREE-R, whereas no ranking of these constraints will

produce strictly progressive assimilation. The combination of the typological account of

directionality and the unranked approach to constraints predicts that regressive

assimilation may apply with greater frequency than progressive assimilation, but never

the reverse.

At the stage 1;9.19 – 1;10.1 (year;month.day) progressive assimilation of coronals

applies variably while regressive assimilation occurs completely consistently. The

predicted frequencies of harmony for each of the word types appears in (2 a.), Trevor's

data is shown in (2 b.)

AGREE-L >> FAITH(LAB) >> AGREE-R, FAITH(COR) TOK KOT POK KOP a. predicted 100% 50% 100% 0% b. attested 1;9.19 – 1;10.1 100% 20% 78% 0%

Figure 25 (Pater & Werle, 2001)

32

Adjacent sounds which have the same place of articulation are called homorganic.

Consonant harmony usually involves the assimilation across an intervening homorganic

vowel. (Levelt, 1994) Consonant-vowel homorganicity can be defined by:

a. [labial] = [round] b. [dorsal] = [back] c. [coronal] = [front]

Figure 26 (Levelt, 1994)

The NO-GAP constraint can be explained with the help of the following representations

(C = coronal, D = dorsal):

A violation against the NO-GAP constraint can be observed in /KIK/: the dorsal feature

is shared by only the consonants and not by the intervening vowel, which creates a gap

and thus a violation. NO-GAP can limit the effects of both regressive and progressive

assimilation, or of progressive assimilation, but never of regressive assimilation alone.

With a small set of constraints and rankings, the authors proposed an account of the

three typological generalizations on child velar harmony, first noted by Stoel-Gammon

(1996). The Rankings and periods of Trevor's relevant grammars can be found in the

following table.

Grammars Rankings Periods G1 AG-L >> AG-R, NO-GAP, F(LAB)>> F(COR) ~ 1;5 G2 AG-L >> F(LAB) >> AG-R, NO-GAP, >> F(COR) 1;6 -1;9.2 G3 AG-L, NO-GAP >> F(LAB)>> AG-R, F(COR) 1;9.19 – 1;10.1 G4 AG-L, NO-GAP, F(LAB) >> F(COR) >> AG-R 1;10.2 – 1;10.15 G5 F(LAB) >> AG-L, NO-GAP >> F(COR) >> AG-R 1;11 – 2;0.3 G6 F(LAB) >> AG-L, NO-GAP, F(COR) >> AG-R 2;0.8 – 2;1.26 G7 F(LAB) , NO-GAP >> AG-L, F(COR) >> AG-R 2;2.1 – 2;2.17 G8 F(LAB) , NO-GAP >> F(COR) >> AG-L >> AG-R 2;2.23 – 2;3.17

Figure 28 (Pater &Werle, 2001)

/T

Assimilation across back vowels Assimilation across front vowels

C DD D

O K/ K/ /K O

D

K/ /T I

C

D

K/ /K I

CC

Figure 27 (Pater & Werle, 2001)

� �

33

5. Conclusion and discussion

In my study, I have examined the speech of a child, Jule, and have given a description

of the phonological processes and preferences in her language. A very common process

was found to be consonant harmony, which is a topic a lot of research was done on

recently. In this section, I will examine if the theories introduced in section 4 are

applicable to Jule's language and to what extend they differ from each other.

5.1. Applicability of the theories to Jule's language

The basis for the comparison between the two theories and Jule's language is section

3.4., in particular the grouping of words based on the place of articulation. (Figure 17)

5.1.1. A local connectionist account of consonant harmony in child language

Berg & Schade (2001) provided an account for consonant harmony in child language by

the use of a local connectionist model. Jule's prefers coronal harmony and mostly velars

are assimilated to coronal sounds. Only a small set of segments is harmonized, which

would argue for hypolinks from velar elements to the feature [velar]. This would make

velar sounds prone to adopting other place features, because hypolinks are not able to

pass enough activation for selection to the feature velar. With the example of the word

�� (tractor) can be shown, in which way the network of Berg & Schade is able to

account for the assimilation taking place.

Figure 29. the flow of activation and inhibition at the moment of /k/ selection for the word Trecker.

"Trecker"

/t/

/�/� /k/�/�/� /�/�

unvoiced

coronal velar

stop

34

At the moment, when �� is selected, all other features receive activation as well. For

manner of articulation [stop] is selected and for voicing [unvoiced]. A weak connection

between �� and velar is not able to pass enough activation onto [velar]. The

simultaneously activated feature [coronal] receives more activation and is selected

instead. The output element is the combination of the features [stop], [unvoiced] and

[coronal], which is a ��. This provides an explanation for the assimilation of ��

to ��.

The assumption that assimilating segments have underdeveloped links to their

containing features if the basis for this model. It is therefore able to motivate any

changes involving underlying features. Jule's preference of plosives over fricatives

could be modeled by underdeveloped links for fricatives to the manner of articulation

feature "fricative".

5.1.2. Typology and variation in child consonant harmony

As described in part IV.2., the theory (Pater & Werle, 2001) accounts for directionality,

target place and vowel blocking in velar harmony. The authors use a small set of

constraints, which are rerankable within the limits of a fixed ranking to model the

various stages of a child.

In contrast to the child Pater & Werle (2001) have examined, which has used velar

harmony, Jule prefers coronal harmony in which velar and labial sounds assimilate to

coronal sounds. This makes the comparison in terms of target place impossible. In

addition, the assumptions about directionality on which all of the authors rankings are

based are in contrast to the findings from Jule's data. In her data progressive

assimilation occurs more frequently than regressive assimilation8 but the typological

generalizations on place assimilations (Menn, 1971) state, that this is just the other way

around.

The findings about vowel blocking can not be backed up as well. TOK words assimilate

to TOT words in 100%. The NO-GAP must play a minor role in the language

development of Jule.

8 TOK words assimilate in 100% in contrast to 0% of KOT words. TIK words assimilate in 86%, whereas only 15% of the KIT words assimilate.

/T

CD

D D

O K/ T/ /T O �

CFigure 30

35

It is to mention, that the assimilation of labial to coronal sounds only occurs with a

intervening back vowel, which suggest, that back vowels trigger the assimilation of

labial sounds in Jule's language. An intervening front vowel seems to block the

assimilation of labials.

5.2. Conclusion

The theory by Berg & Schade (2000) is able to account for the singleton harmony in

Jule's language by the use of hypolinks. The aspect of directionality was not modeled

into the network, this is why it cannot account for Jule's preference of progressive over

regressive assimilation.

Pater & Werle (2001) provided an account for the three typological generalizations

mentioned above on child velar harmony. None of the findings from the examination by

Pater & Werle can be backed up by Jule's data. It is most likely, that this is due to the

differences in used harmonies and in length of the period of examination.

5.3. Outlook

An examination over a longer period of time including more data might be able to show

distinct changes in assimilations or other phonological processes, which can be the

ground on which a grouping into stages comparable to those of Pater & Werle (2001)

could be done.

For further examinations on changes in the speech of Jule's, simulations with the model

by Berg & Schade (2000) could provide insights on preferences of sounds. Interesting

would be the modeling of directionality, specifically Jule's preference of progressive

over regressive assimilation.

36

References

Hall, A.T. (2000)."Phonologie – eine Einführung". Berlin: de Gruyter Verlag Breitsprecher, R. (2001). "PONS Wörterbuch für Schule & Studium". Ernst Klett Verlag Wängler, H.-H. (1981)."Atlas deutscher Sprachlaute". Berlin. Akademie Verlag. Kohler, K.J.(1995)."Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen" Berlin. Erich Schmidt Verlag. 2nd Edition Giegerich, H. (1992)."English Phonology: An Introduction" Cambridge. Cambridge University Press Stemberger, J.P. (1985)."An interactive activation model of language production" In Ellis, A.W. (ed.), "Progress in the psychology of language" (Vol.1.pp 143-186). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Stemberger, J.P., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (1991). "The underspecification of coronals: Evidence from language acquisition and performance errors" In Paradis,C. & Prunet, J.-F.(Eds.) " The special state of coronals " pp.181-199), Orlando, Academic Press Stemberger, J.P & Bernhardt, B. (1998). "Handbook of phonological development –From the perspective of constraint-based nonlinear phonology" San Diego, Academic Press Selkirk, E. (1984a). "On the Major Class Features and Syllable Theory" in Aronoff, M. &Oehrle, R.T., (Eds.) "Language Sound Structure" pp.107-136. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Pater, J. Werle, A. (2001). "Typology and Variation in Child Consonant Harmony" (from http://www.umass.edu/linguist/people/faculty/pater/pater.html, visited on 20.10.2003) Fletcher, P. (2000). "Handbook of child language" Oxford, Blackwell Menn, L. & Stoel-Gammon, C.(1995 "Phonological Development Jakobson, R (1978). "Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze" Frankfurt am Main. Edition Suhrkamp. 4th Edition Pinker, S. (1994). "The Language Instinct – How the mind creates Language". New York. Harper Perennial 1994 Berg, T. & Schade, U. (2000). " A Local Connectionist Account of Consonant Harmony in Child Harmony" in Cognitive Science Vol. 24 pp 123-149 Grijzenhout, J. & Joppen, S. (1998). "First steps in the acquisition of German consonants – a case study" (from http://web.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~grijzenh/#PUBLICATIONS, visited on 24.10.2003) Rumelhard, D.E. & McClelland, J.L. (1986) "Parallel Distributed Processing – Vol 2. Set: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition". Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Ramers, K.-H. (1991). " Ambisilbische Konsonanten im Deutschen" In Eisenberg, P. et al. (1992). "Silbenphonologie des Deutschen". Tübingen, Narr Wiese, R. (1996) "Silbische und lexikalische Phonologie: Studien zum Chinesischen und Deutschen". Tübingen, Niemeyer

37

Appendix A:

Eidesstattliche Erklärung

Hiermit erkläre ich, Tobias Dominik Rauch, die vorliegende Arbeit "Phonological

Development in Children" selbständig verfaßt zu haben und keine anderen Quellen oder

Hilfsmittel als die Angegebenen verwendet zu haben.

Köln, den 24.10.2003

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