Phonological templates in development
This book explores the role of phonological templates in early language use from the perspective of usage-based phonology and exemplar models and within the larger developmental framework of Dynamic Systems Theory.
It draws on data from American and British English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Italian, and Welsh, with briefer longitudinal accounts of template use in Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese. Children are found to begin with simple word forms that match their selected adult targets; this is followed by the production of more challenging words, adapted to fit the child's existing patterns. Early accuracy is replaced by later recourse to an 'inner model' - a template - of a favoured word shape.
The book also examines the timing, fading, quantification, and function of child phonological templates. Throughout the volume, the discussion returns to the issues of emergent systematicity, the roles of articulatory and memory challenges for children, and the similarities and differences in the function of templates for adults as compared with children.
Researcher: Marilyn Vihman