Markedness and the Development of Prosodic Structure

It has long been noted that children’s early words are truncated in form, and that those forms show a certain degree of variability in shape. In this paper I argue that children’s early word productions can best be understood in terms of output constraints on surface form. First, I show that children’s early grammars allow for the emergence of the unmarked form of syllables (Core Syllables) and prosodic words (Minimal Words), and that these can be thought of as different stages of prosodic development. I then demonstrate how the prosodic development of children’s early words can be naturally accounted for in terms of prosodic