Phonological Acquisition ― Child Language and Constraint-based Grammar

How do children learn to produce language sound patterns and what errors do they make? Assuming only an undergraduate background in phonology, child speech patterns and their analogues across adult languages are used to discuss Optimality Theory. It also investigated how phonological learning interacts with other aspects of language acquisition.

Anne-Michelle Tessier is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is a formally-trained phonologist specializing in phonological acquisition and its consequences for grammatical theory. She has taught at the University of Michigan, USA, and the 2013 LSA Summer Institute. Her work has appeared in Phonology, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Language Acquisition, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Lingua and Language, and she serves as an Associate Editor at Lingua.