Truncation Without Shape Constraints: The Latter Stages of Prosodic Acquisition

Abstract

This article evaluates the claim of uniform size and shape restrictions in prosodic development using a cross-sectional database of English-speaking children's multi-syllabic word productions. Several of the youngest children in the study were limited by a bisyllabic output constraint, consistent with 1 stress-foot, and one of the oldest children produced output forms, consistent with 2 stress-feet, suggesting that uniform shape may occur at the earliest stages of prosodic development and on an individual basis for certain children. In the majority of cases, however, input-output correspondence between stressed and word-final syllables played the greatest role in explaining output patterns. Consequently, the article explores optimality accounts of truncation that do not assume a size restriction. Children's increasing faithfulness to unstressed syllables can be explained by different constraint rankings that relate to edge alignment, syllable structure, and foot structure.