The Emergence of Phonology
Whole-word Approaches and Cross-linguistic Evidence

This volume brings classic texts from the last thirty years together with contemporary, cutting-edge perspectives on child language.

Marilyn M. Vihman (Edited by), Tamar Keren-Portnoy (Edited by)

9780521762342, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2013

532 pages, 39 b/w illus. 70 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.88 kg

'The Emergence of Phonology is a collection of descriptive papers for linguists researching early phonological development in children. The studies presented here provide detailed discussion and analysis of the early stage of language acquisition in children learning different languages. Based on fieldwork and personal data collection from subjects, the authors successfully describe the individual factors as well as general implications of first language acquisition.' Anett Réka Garami, LINGUIST List

How well have classic ideas on whole-word phonology stood the test of time? Waterson claimed that each child has a system of their own; Ferguson and Farwell emphasized the relative accuracy of first words; Menn noted the occurrence of regression and the emergence of phonological systematicity. This volume brings together classic texts such as these with current data-rich studies of British and American English, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, French, Japanese, Polish and Spanish. This combination of classic and contemporary work from the last thirty years presents the reader with cutting-edge perspectives on child language by linking historical approaches with current ideas such as exemplar theory and usage-based phonology, and contrasting state-of-the-art perspectives from developmental psychology and linguistics. This is a valuable resource for cognitive scientists, developmentalists, linguists, psychologists, speech scientists and therapists interested in understanding how children begin to use language without the benefit of language-specific innate knowledge.

1. Introduction Marilyn M. Vihman and Tamar Keren-Portnoy
Part I. The Current Framework: 2. Phonological development: toward a 'radical' templatic phonology Marilyn M. Vihman and William Croft
Part II. Setting Papers: 3. Child phonology: a prosodic view Natalie Waterson
4. Words and sounds in early language acquisition Charles A. Ferguson and Carol B. Farwell
5. Developmental reorganization of phonology: a hierarchy of basic units of acquisition Marlys A. Macken
6. Development of articulatory, phonetic, and phonological capabilities Lise Menn
Part III. Cross-Linguistic Studies: 7. One idiosyncratic strategy in the acquisition of phonology T. M. S. Priestly
8. Phonological reorganization: a case study Marilyn M. Vihman and Shelley L. Velleman
9. How abstract is child phonology? Towards an integration of linguistic and psychological approaches Marilyn M. Vihman, Shelley L. Velleman and Lorraine McCune
10. Beyond early words: word template development in Brazilian Portuguese Daniela Oliveira-Guimarães
11. Templates in French Sophie Wauquier and Naomi Yamaguchi
12. The acquisition of consonant clusters in Polish: a case study Marta Szreder
13. Geminate template: a model for first Finnish words Tuula Savinainen-Makkonen
14. Influence of geminate structure on early Arabic templatic patterns Ghada Khattab and Jalal Al-Tamimi
15. Lexical frequency effects on phonological development: the case of word production in Japanese Mitsuhiko Ota
Part IV. Perspectives and Challenges: 16. A view from developmental psychology Lorraine McCune
17. Challenges to theories, charges to a model: the linked-attractor model of phonological development Lise Menn, Ellen Schmidt and Brent Nicholas.

Subject Areas: Phonetics, phonology [CFH], Psycholinguistics [CFD], Linguistics [CF]