Acquisition of Voicing Alternations in Bangla: A Morpho-phonological Study

Voicing alternation is a linguistic terminology which is mainly discussed in phonology and morphology. Although it is a very potential research topic in linguistics, no comprehensive research has been found to investigate this area from Bengali language context. At present, it has been analyzed in different language perspectives. The purpose of the study is to know the phonological features of voicing alternations in the language of Bengali children. Simultaneously, this study actually attempts to assess the capacity of using voicing alternations. This thesis is mainly concerned with the acquisition of voicing alternation which is found in different morpho-phonemic contexts. In order to reveal the nature of voicing alternations of Bengali children, a qualitative research method was applied to collect and analyze the data. The result of this dissertation has been explored by collecting data from the participants through semi structured interview method because it is a highly flexible technique to collect qualitative data. Eighteen Bengali children were interviewed. The most common finding is that the production of voicing alternations even in known words remains difficult until at least 30 months of age in the speech of Bengali children. On the other hand, Bengali-learning children are able to produce voicing alternations earlier who have more MLU than their age. However, results indicated that the tendency of using voicing alternations increases with age. A study on the acquisition of voicing alternations has become an important part of study in the department of Linguistics. So this study may play an important role in this field of linguistics as it focuses on the phonological features of voicing alternations in the language of Bengali children. However, this research can be helpful for the students of Linguistics department. This study also contributes to the knowledge of those who are willing to conduct similar researches in the area.