The acquisition of prosodic word structures in Spanish by monolingual and Spanish-German bilingual children

This article examines the constraints on Prosodic Word production in Spanish by three monolingual and three Spanish-German bilingual children from the beginning of word production until 2;2. It also considers the relationship between Prosodic Words and Phonological Phrases, and in the case of monosyllabic words, it takes into consideration syllable structure (i.e., presence or absence of codas), in order to ascertain the importance of foot binarity in early child speech. Although the preferred Prosodic Word shape is that of a trochee, there appear a few monosyllables, consisting of CVC (or CV), which are produced earlier by the bilinguals than by the monolinguals. The minimality constraint is violated by the production of CV forms. Maximality constraints are observed for a very short time, as unfooted syllables appear very soon, especially in the data of the monolinguals. However, it takes several more months until Spanish children are able to produce Prosodic Words containing two feet, whereas Phonological Phrases constituted by two disyllabic Prosodic Words are produced earlier by some children. It is proposed that such data can be optimally treated by means of constraints, and their relevance to the question of whether prosodic structure is acquired bottom-up is briefly discussed.