How to say 'Grandma': the problem of developing phonological representations

Abstract

Theories of early child phonology disagree as to the form of representations in children's lexicons; this issue is made more complex by the unusual patterns that some children display. Data are presented from one child, 1;6 to 2;0, who formed three idiosyncratic hypotheses: (1) she developed a template for word shapes which consisted of [CVCN] with loud nasal plosion; (2) she treated English as if it had distinctive tone; (3) she developed an anterior-posterior obstruent ordering constraint which in some cases involved metathesis. It is argued: first that the [CVCN] template had its origins in her favourite babbling patterns; second, that treating English as a tone language originated in her reliance on the pitch cue for lexical stress in adult models; and third, that the metathesis pattern was based on a production strategy whereby segments which are simpler to produce are located at word onsets. It is shown that an 'enriched single-lexicon' model is optimal for characterizing this child's phonological representations.