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

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.

Marilyn M. Vihman is Professor of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York.
Tamar Keren-Portnoy is Lecturer of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York.