Phonological Simplification

Phonological Simplification

1. Substitution

   • When a child changes a sound for one that is easier to say
   • Children often substitute the voiced palatal approximant /j/ for the voiced alveolar lateral approximant /l/ in "yellow"

2. Addition

   • This is when a child adds a spurious consonant or vowel to a word
   • For example adding "y" to "dog" to form he diminutive "doggy"

3. Consonant Cluster Reduction

   • When a child reduces a set of consonants that are all together
   • They may remove the "s" from the "sp" in "spider"

4. Deletion

   • When a child drops a consonant from a word when it is surrounded by a vowel on one or both sides
   • This usually occurs at the end of words
   • For example, a child might say "do" instead of "dog"

5. Assimilation

   • This is when a sound later on in the word has an influence on other sounds in the word
   • For example, the /b/ sound in "rabbit" might assimilate to the front-position of the word to form "babbit"

6. Berko and Brown

   • Conducted the "fis" "fish" phenomenon, which happened when a child was discussing with their caregiver about what they called their plastic "fis"
   • When the caregiver repeated this to them, they were able to recorgnise the caregiver had said "fis" instead of "fish", but could not then pronounce "fish"
   • This proves that comprehension precedes competency. Childen can notice mistakes, but not recorgnise that they are making these mistakes