Learning to use word versus phrase level prosody to identify compounds from lists is thought to be a protracted process, only acquired by 11 years (Vogel & Raimy, 2002). However, a recent study has shown that 5-year-olds can use prosodic cues other than stress for these two structures in production, at least for early-acquired noun-noun…

Purpose: Some variability in children's early productions of grammatical morphemes reflects phonological factors. For example, production of 3rd person singular "-s" is increased in utterance-final versus utterance-medial position and in simple versus cluster codas (e.g., "sees" vs. "hits"). Understanding the factors that govern such variability…

Children's early productions are highly variable. Findings from children's early productions of grammatical morphemes indicate that some of the variability is systematically related to segmental and phonological factors. Here, we extend these findings by assessing 2-year-olds' production of non-morphemic codas using both listener decisions and…

Noun-class prefixes are obligatory in most Bantu languages. However, the Sotho languages (Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi) permit a subset of prefixes to be realized as null at the intersection of "unmarked" phonological, syntactic, and discourse conditions. This raises the question of how and when the licensing of null prefixes is learned. Using…