Provides a preliminary description of phonological tier development in Cantonese-speaking children. Data were analyzed for word, syllable, onset-rime, skeletal, and segmental tiers. Results suggest a developmental order in acquisition of hierarchical features. (Author/VWL)

One English speaking child's phonological, semantic, and syntactical development from 15 to 21 months old is detailed in order to investigate the development of the mid vowel categories in English as reflected in spontaneous speech production. Prior research on this topic is summarized to reveal certain trends in the development of mid vowels.…

Reports on an experiment, conducted on ten children who misarticulated /s/, and designed to survey the effect of consonant context on misarticulation. Suggests that a context-sensitive model of phonetic performance is needed to account for variation in correct /s/ production. (Author/AM)

This is an investigation of the phonological units used by preschool children. Twenty-four English-speaking children aged 4;0 to 5;0 were given three experimental tasks which investigated their ability to segment initial consonant clusters into phoneme-length units: (1) in a segmentation task they gave the first sound of initial cluster words; (2)…

The pronunciation of stop consonants in consonant-vowel-consonant words by 45 preschool children (15 with speech disorders) was evaluated. In the speech-disordered group, errors in initial position differed from those in final position. Voicing errors occurred most frequently in initial position, and glottal stop realizations in final position.…

Describes vocalizations of five 13-month-old infants. Data are reported on syllable shape, vowel-like and consonant-like production in context and time, periodic utterances, complex babbling sequences, recurrent phonetic forms, fundamental frequency, and intonation types. Results are consistent with data from other studies and support theory of…

Describes two experiments which examined the way in which kindergarteners, first graders, and adults spell syllables like /spa/,/sta/, and /ska/. The proportion of voiced spellings was found to decrease with reading level. The nonstandard spellings were fairly prevalent among children, but almost nonexistent among adults. (SED)

Reports on two studies on the acquisition by children of the voicing contrast in Mexican Spanish word-initial stops. The first was a longitudinal study. One analysis showed children unable to distinguish between voiced-voiceless stop cognate pairs at age 3;10. A spirantization analysis, however, more clearly revealed the children's phonological…

Reports on an experiment which sought to compare child and adult speech in terms of (1) stop productions evidencing devoicing during consonant closure, and (2) consonant closure evidencing voicing in the case of devoiced stops. (Author/AM)

Describes an unusual phonological pattern exhibited by a child aged two years that involves the production of word-final strident continuants in words whose adult forms contain these features in initial, rather than final, position (e.g., ops for soap). (13 references) (GLR)

Considers the much-debated markedness and structural status of word-initial /s/-sequences in English by examining the development of a 3.5-year-old male who has a phonological disorder. (Author/VWL)

The role of a strategy of reduplication in phonological acquisition and behavior was examined in terms of: (1) the relationship between adoption of this strategy and failure to produce nonreduplicated multisyllabic forms and final consonants, and (2) the role of reduplication in production constraints. (Author/AM)

One-year-olds (N=11) showed no differences in comprehension of words containing consonants that they had never successfully produced (attempted), words with consonants easily produced (in), and words with consonants never before produced or attempted (out). Attempted and out words were less likely to be acquired in production than in words.…

Describes a study that examined the organization inherent in children's misarticulations of final consonant sounds. Specifically, it inquired whether, when children with final stop and fricative omissions are taught to produce either stops or fricatives in word-final positions, generalization occurs to untaught items or only to taught items.…

Reports three studies concerning individual differences in children's use of consonants during early phonological development. The findings indicate that these differences fall within a predictable range, that the linguistic environment cannot account for several of them, and that they are partly due to variations in the choice of lexical items.…