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.

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...