Within-word constraints in child phonology.

Abstract

This study investigates the nature of the phonological simplifications seen in the speech of preschool children, by analysing the effect of stress position, phonetic environment and relative recency of sound acquisition, on accuracy of production of the initial consonant cluster within a word. Forty, 4-year-old children, took part in an imitation task consisting of 44 three syllable nonsense words, half of which began with an early developing cluster and half with a late developing cluster. Both halves contained word pairs with first and second syllable stress. Half the subjects repeated words with a similar phonetic environment and half, with a dissimilar one. The results showed that in the main, the errors that occurred could be classified according to developmental phonological processes seen in younger children. Both stress position and developmental status of the cluster were significant in their effect on the number of errors occurring, and the phonetic environment in affecting types of errors occurring, in that the number of assimilation processes applied increased in the dissimilar phonetic environment condition.