Introduction

In this chapter we consider syllable types in acquisition, language typology, and also in a third dimension, namely production frequency in the language surrounding the language learner.

In Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993) both language acquisition and language typology can be accommodated. The basic assumption is that constraints are universal, but that the rankings of these constraints are language particular. For language typology the idea is that different rankings reflect different (possible) languages. For acquisition the idea is that the learner needs to acquire the language-specific ranking of his mother tongue. The assumption here, like in most otherwork on acquisition to date (Gnanadesikan this volume, Hayes this volume, Davidson et al. this volume, Prince and Tesar this volume), is that structural constraints initially outrank faithfulness constraints. The grammar in this state prefers structurally unmarked outputs to faithful ones. By promoting faithfulness constraints in the ranking, or by demoting structural constraints, the outputs can become more marked and more faithful to their inputs.

What is the expected relation between language typology and language acquisition? Concentrating here on syllable types, languages can be structurally marked or unmarked with respect to the structural constraints that refer to syllable type: Onset, No-Coda, *Complex-Onset, and *Complex-Coda. A language is structurally unmarked with respect to a structural constraint when such a constraint dominates faithfulness constraints, and it is marked when such a constraint is dominated by faithfulness constraints.