Purpose: Children acquire /-ez/ syllabic plurals (e.g., buses) later than /-s, -z/ segmental plurals (e.g., cats,dogs). In this study, the authors explored whether increased syllable number or segmental factors best explains poorer performance with syllabic plurals. Method: An elicited imitation experiment was conducted with 14 two-year-olds…

Recent work has shown that children have detailed phonological representations of consonants at both word-initial and word-final edges. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether onsets and codas are equally represented by young learners since word edges are isomorphic with syllable edges in this work. The current study sought to explore toddler's…

This study analysed the early linguistic development of Italian pre-term children. Samples of spontaneous pre-linguistic and verbal production were recorded at 12 and 18 months of age from two groups of children: 24 pre-term children and 15 full-term children. The Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Questionnaire was administered at 24 months…