This article examines whether children alter a variable phonological pattern in an artificial language towards a phonetically-natural form. We address acquisition of a variable rounding harmony pattern through the use of two artificial languages; one with dominant harmony pattern, and another with dominant non-harmony pattern. Overall, children…

This study investigates how "phonological neighborhood density" (PND) affects word production and recognition in 4-to-6-year-old Russian children in comparison to adults. Previous experiments with English-speaking adults showed that a dense neighborhood facilitated word production but inhibited recognition whereas a sparse neighborhood…

In this article we report two studies: a detailed longitudinal analysis of errors in "wh"-questions from six German-learning children (age 2 ; 0-3 ; 0) and an analysis of the prosodic characteristics of "wh"-questions in German child-directed speech. The results of the first study demonstrate that German-learning children…

The study examines prosodic characteristics of Hebrew speech directed to children between 0 ; 9-3 ; 0 years, based on longitudinal samples of 228,946 tokens (8,075 types). The distribution of prosodic patterns--the number of syllables and stress patterns--is analyzed across three lexical categories, distinguishing not only between open- and…

Phonological representation for adult speakers is generally assumed to include sub-lexical information at the level of the phoneme. Some have suggested, however, that young children operate with more holistic lexical representations. If young children use whole-word representation and adults employ phonemic representation, then a component of…

Considers the possibility that infants from different linguistic backgrounds babble similarly. Results of an experiment show that Spanish- and English-learning babies produce predominantly CV syllables with voiceless, unaspirated plosive consonants. Vowel production is also similar. (EKN)

Analyzes a child's use of word-level phonological constraints in multi-word utterances. The selection and avoidance patterns and modifications of adult forms indicated the presence of a syllable sequencing constraint that governed grammar and word combinations. (Author/CB)

Presents a case study of the babbling monologues produced by a Dutch child in the six weeks following acquisiton of the first word, which shows that this child's word production and his concurrent babbling are very much related. Concludes that word production influences the course of babbling and vice versa. (SED)

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)

A diary study of the speech of a child acquiring English found eight between-word processes, all of which were optional and occurred in fairly restricted environments. Most of the processes were also of short duration. (Author/CB)

Looks at phonological development in lexical terms and extends the method of Ferguson and Farwell to consideration of syllables within words. The research is directed toward the question of whether children acqure a sound system by following "universal" orders of acquistion or by developing distinct strategies. (EJS)

This article discusses children's phonological limitations, including perceptual difficulties and productive difficulties. (NCR)

Examines within an experimental paradigm phonological selection and avoidance patterns of infants and discusses the role of these patterns in early lexical acquisition. (EKN)

Examination of the phonological acquisition of a young girl whose parents spoke two Cantonese dialects indicated that she acquired neither parents' dialect, supporting the claim that children use all available input in acquiring language rather than limiting themselves to a primary language model. (Author/CB)

Examines the relationship between phonetic substitution patterns in child speech and sound change patterns in dialects of adult language, basing an explanation of these phenomena on acoustic data and language universals. (AM)