Word-initial consonant omissions - a developmental process in children learning Finnish

Abstract

In early speech development it may be argued that children often focus on the word-initial position. Word-initial consonant omission is seen as an atypical process in child language because it has seldom been reported in the literature on normal development. This study analyses the early speech development of six Finnish children with special emphasis upon singleton consonants in the word-initial position. On the basis of this study one may suggest that word-initial consonant omission is a developmental process for children learning Finnish. All six children underwent this early process of omission; from the first ten words onwards, omissions occurred for six months on average. While children learning English mainly target monosyllables in their early speech production, the Finnish child targets words with two or more syllables. Does the Finnish child focus his or her attention more on the middle part of the word when listening to or targeting long words? In addition, the medial geminates, frequently targeted by the Finnish child, may cause children to focus on the middle of a word.