Abstract: In this paper, we observe the productions of seven monolingual Portuguese children in order to account for the acquisition of Onset clusters in European Portuguese. The results will be compared with results from other languages, with a specific reference to the acquisition of Dutch. Although similar initial stages between the two groups of children were found, the final stages reveal significant differences. Our analysis will then focus on the dissimilarities exhibited by the Portuguese children, with special reference to the vowel epenthesis strategy, which is frequently attested in Portuguese children’s productions, although infrequent in the data reported in previous studies of phonological acquisition.

Abstract: Two case studies are presented of two monolingual Spanish children (ages 1;5 to 2;2 and 1;3 to 2;3) focusing on the acquisition of syllable final consonants, here analyzed as codas. On the basis of target Spanish it is predicted that word final codas should be acquired before word medial codas, because the former are often coronal, i.e., unspecified for Place, and the latter are linked to the following onset, which involves some representational complexity. Moreover, if morphological factors play an important role in early acquisition, final codas, corresponding to plurals and to verbal endings, should be favored over medial codas. The results instead show a clear preference for medial over final codas. Codas of function words, i.e., articles, are favored as well. The analysis shows that these results are due to the prosodic and rhythmic structure of the language and relates syllable development to prosodic and rhythmic development as well as to the development of function words. The preferred foot in adult as well as in early Spanish is the trochee, and many of the function words receive a secondary stress. It is thus argued that a stressed syllable, being the head of a foot, licenses codas in early acquisition. For the two children presented here, prosody paves the way to morphology.

Abstract: This paper studies the role of main stress in Brazilian Portuguese sandhi rules. It is shown that, when the second vowel of a VV sequence carries the phrasal stress, Degemination and Elision cannot apply to resolve the hiatus, whereas under the same circumstances, Diphthongization may occur. Within Optimality Theory, this restriction is explained by a Local Conjunction that controls vowel deletion as well as the alignment between the main foot and the head of the lexical word, which is irrelevant for the evaluation of outputs containing a diphthong, and therefore allows, in the latter case, the unmarked structure to emerge.

Abstract: Investigating Root Infinitive constructions (RIs) in the adult grammar, we concentrate on a comparative view between English and Spanish. Through a careful study of the syntactic and semantic properties of RIs, and their cross-linguistic differences, we present strong arguments for the internal structure of RIs that we propose: English RIs are deficient TPs, while Spanish RIs have an additional Comp-related functional projection FP on top. This structural difference accounts for the syntactic similarities and differences in RIs in the two languages. On the semantic side, we propose that RIs are indefinite descriptions of events. RIs crucially involve two related terms, the RI itself (John read this book?!) and the Coda (That’s impossible!), where the relating predicate is an exclamative operator with scalar properties akin to the focus particle even. We show that the RI, the exclamative operator and the Coda form a tripartite structure both syntactically and semantically, in the sense of other standard analyses of quantificational constructions. Differences in temporal interpretation are shown t o derive from the existence of the tripartite structure and the (un)availability of infinitival verb movement.

Abstract: This paper examines the spontaneous productions of 3 normal and 11 French children with SLI, focussing on infinitives, subject and complement clitics, and determiners. The 3 normal children (1.8–2.10) appear to show roughly concomitant use of infinitives and omission of determiners or pronominal clitics. However, determiner omission and the use of infinitives are different in some respects. Moreover, complement clitics appear much later than subject clitics or determiners. For the SLI children (3.10–7.10), opposite patterns in the development of infinitives and determiners could be established, and complement clitics rarely occur even if determiners are used correctly and infinitives are no longer produced. The data from French SLI thus indicate that infinitive use does not necessarily coincide with determiner omission or the absence of complement clitics. Under the assumption that SLI children show parallel but delayed development, these findings imply that theories of development should not assume too close a link between these phenomena.