Building the evidence
This chapter presents data from six children learning American English at two developmental points: first word use and the end of the single-word period, when templates typically first begin to be identifiable. The chapter lays out procedures for identifying prosodic structures and variants and also consonant inventories, which give insight into the child’s resources for word production. Analysis of the most frequently used prosodic structures is followed by an analysis of each child’s data to permit template identification, based primarily on high proportionate use and adaptation. A developmental comparison of the two data sets shows continued reliance, by all the children, on the default or simplest CV structure, but advances in use of one- and two-syllable structures with codas. Consonant variegation is found to be the single greatest challenge for early word formation.