Bringing together well-known researchers, this collection of essays focuses on constraints in phonological acquisition. The first two chapters review the research in its broader context, including an introduction by the editors that provides a concise tutorial on Optimality Theory. The remaining chapters address a number of partially overlapping themes: the study of child production data in terms of constraints; learnability issues; perceptual development and its relation to the development of production; and second language acquisition.

Bringing together well-known researchers, this collection of essays focuses on constraints in phonological acquisition. The first two chapters review the research in its broader context, including an introduction by the editors that provides a concise tutorial on Optimality Theory. The remaining chapters address a number of partially overlapping themes: the study of child production data in terms of constraints; learnability issues; perceptual development and its relation to the development of production; and second language acquisition.

Harmonic Grammar and Harmonic Serialism introduces readers to current research in Optimality Theory that involves a reconsideration of two of Prince and Smolensky's (1993/2004) basic architectural decisions. One is the choice of constraint ranking over the numerically weighted constraints of OT's predecessor, Harmonic Grammar. The other is the choice of parallel evaluation over a version of OT in which the representation is changed and evaluated iteratively Harmonic Serialism. The contributions in this volume explore the consequences for phonological theory of adopting serial evaluation,...

In this handbook, renowned scholars from a range of backgrounds provide a state of the art review of key developmental findings in language acquisition. The book places language acquisition phenomena in a richly linguistic and comparative context, highlighting the link between linguistic theory, language development, and theories of learning.
The book is divided into six parts. Parts I and II examine the acquisition of phonology and morphology respectively, with chapters covering topics such as phonotactics and syllable structure, prosodic phenomena, compound word formation, and...