A PHONOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE TWO-WORD STAGE OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A CASE STUDY OF AN ENGLISH-HAUSA BILINGUAL

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Department of Arts

Human language is primarily characterized by sounds formed and produced by the Organs of Speech. This dissertation entitled; “A Phonological Description of the Two-Word Stage of Language Acquisition: A Case Study of an English-Hausa Bilingual” particularly considered the sound development of a child at two-word stage. The area of focus includes Articulatory Phonology-Segmental and Suprasegmental phonemes. These were some of the approaches used to analyse and describe the sounds of two-word utterances of the main participant of research. The aim of the study was to document the utterances of the main participant from 20-24, 32 and 33 months, and to also conduct a phonological investigation/inventory of phonemic sounds of the same participant Juju and her articulation processes. The objectives were to analyseand describe the sound constituents, both segmental and supra segmental phonemes of the main participant, investigate the influence of supra-segmental phonemes on the child‟s contextual use of language, and ascertain if the child‟s language at this stage couldbe regarded as truly connected. This was achieved via recording of Juju‟s (name referred to the participant) utterances consequently making repeated listening expedient. Aspects of two word utterances in English were the units on which the investigations were based. However, because she is bilingual, acquiring English and Hausa simultaneously and some elements of pidgin, the other languages (Hausa and Pidgin) were not completely disregarded in the analysis.The three-media-techniques of; the diary, the audio and video recording methods were employed in the data collection process. In the analysis and description of the recorded data, the research discovered that Juju‟s utterances were characterised by gross substitution (substitution of one consonant with another, one vowel with another, substitution of vowel with consonant and substitution of consonant cluster with single consonants), reduction, simplification, inventive reduplication and deletion/elision. The research arrived at the conclusion that Juju employed these strategies of substitution, reduction, simplification, inventive reduplication and deletion to articulate sounds at this stage because her organs of speech are still developing.