Chapter 5: Sounds in words: production
Chapter 5: Sounds in words: production
Book name: first language acquisition
Writer: Eve. Clark
Saeed Mojarradi ; Phd Saturday, April 14, 2018
When children start to talk early in their second year, it’s often difficult to identify their first words. Take one year olds first production of the English word squirrel: ga. Upon reflection, we can trace the processes that probably led to this simplified pronunciation.
First Children typically omit liquid sounds like l and r, they simplify consonant clusters, usually retaining only the stop if there is one, so in the initial cluster SKW-, they drop both the glide W and the initial S-, keeping only the velar stop K and they often voice initial stop consonants.
One assumption is that children make use of what they already received as they start trying to produce words. That’s, they rely on stored representations of words and longer expressions heard in the adult speech around them.
These stored forms provide readily available models of the targets they are aiming at, models against which they can compare their own productions.
As children produce more words, they observe more and more carefully any restrictions on the forms of words in their language.
