How do children learn to produce speech? What kinds of errors do they make along the way? What can those errors teach us about phonological theory? In this comprehensive introduction, Anne-Michelle Tessier examines how we acquire the sounds and sound patterns of language. Analyzing child speech patterns and their analogues among adult languages while also teaching the basics of Optimality Theory, this novel textbook will help students develop a broad grammatical understanding of phonological acquisition. Phonological Acquisition provides• evidence to support theory from multiple language families, populations and data collection methods• connections to lexical, morphological and perceptual learning• a wealth of exercises to guide readers through Optimality Theory reasoning and implementation Assuming only a basic knowledge of phonology, this textbook is aimed at students of linguistics, developmental psychology, speech pathology and communication disorders. It will also be of interest to professional psychologists, acquisition researchers, clinicians, and anyone concerned with child speech development.