Learning long words--a typological perspective

The early phonological development of six normally developing children learning Finnish is reported. The primary focus is on their production of multisyllabic targets. The one-syllable and two-syllable forms found in the speech of children learning English has often been seen as a universal feature of early words. Later research has indicated that, for example, some children learning Japanese may produce word forms that contain three to five syllables already at the age of 15 months among the first fifty words. In Finnish long words are common and as expected, children targeted them already at the first word stage. However, they succeeded only after this stage had passed. Individual differences were extensive. Although the main tendency seems to reduce the last element of long words producing the SW1-pattern, important exceptions can be found so that the results do not provide strong support for a metrical template. The study also indicated that the segmental factor may influence the deletion pattern: the syllable that contained a stop was produced, regardless of its position.