Lectal acquisition and linguistic stereotype formation 227relegated to content words such as verbs or nouns, but pertains equally well
to the grammar in the form of non-content items such as prepositions and
articles or in the form of complex syntactic constructions - the idea that
paradigmatic variation at the level of speech sounds should be excluded
from the category of potentially meaningful items and relegated to pure
form, to builders of meaning in the structuralist vein, was of course a dis-
heartening thought.
Putting theory to the test, an empirical study on lectal acquisition was
conducted in 2007. We know from research on accent-based speaker identi-
fication in adults that lectal recognition and classification is not only fast
(Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh 1999) but also quite precise (van Bezooijen and
Gooskens 1999) – but how does it work in young children? In Cognitive
Linguistics it is assumed that language acquisition is a bottom-up process
guided by linguistic experience. Input to language acquisition is an encoun-
ter with actual expressions and generalizations are made over usage-based
events. In line with these principles we may also assume that knowledge of
language varieties is experientially grounded and that lectal schemata
emerge in terms of abstractions over usage-based events. So when do child-
ren begin to pay attention to not just what is said, but how it is said? If we
assume that phonetic detail is not discarded but stored and put to construc-
tive uses, how precise is lectal recognition across different age groups and
what are the crucial stages in terms of emergence, or consolidation, of ex-
perientially grounded knowledge?
The interest in the explanatory dimension (how do children acquire the
knowledge that allow them to identify accents as effectively as they do?)
arose from a firm conviction that passive competence obviously does exist.
To capture both dimensions in the design of the study we identified the
following research questions:
x When do children begin to pay attention not only to what is said but
also to how it is said?
x When do children begin to systematically store information about sub-
tle differences in pronunciation, generalizing over usage-based events
to form lectal categories?
x How accurate is speech perception at different intervals of age?
x How precise is it at different taxonomic levels?
x Which linguistic features and dimensions allow children to proceed to
correct identification?
x Which factors – apart from age – have an influence on awareness?