BiPhon-OT for child phonology

Formalizing toddlers’ unmarked prosodic structure as an epiphenomenon of interacting phonetic constraints

Abstract

English-speaking toddlers are more likely to omit weak syllables from prosodically unfooted rather than footed positions. This study accounts for these prosodically conditioned omissions using Paul Boersma’s BiPhon model in terms of interactions between toddlers’ articulatory constraints against short syllables and knowledge of how short unfooted weak syllables are typically realized. This formalizes a proposal by Goffman and Malin and provides an alternative to merely-phonological accounts with phonological Markedness constraints. This work raises the possibility that more child speech production patterns might be modelled as an epiphenomenon of phonetic constraint interactions and illustrates that Paul Boersma’s BiPhon model would be perfectly placed for doing so.