This 21st collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-
Children may produce the following forms, for the word swing:
a. [wɪŋ]
b. [fɪŋ]
Explain whether both forms can be taken as natural child renditions of the target word.
This requires minimal rounding of the labials, but not another component of phonology, i.e. the teeth.
Using [f] for [sw] shows difficulties in pronouncing diphthongs.
The target word is a cluster of more than one consonant. Since fricatives are difficult, the child drops the stop and keeps the glide, in a. In b. the child replaces the stop by a labial.
This could be C-cluster simplification, where the C-cluster is simplified in some manner.
Both fricatives ‘f’ and ‘w’ are produced. Hence we surmise that the child did a cluster reduction, as clusters in the coda are difficult to pronounce, if [s] is retained.
In b., the cluster is reduced to a monophonous dental fricative /f/. Hence, this is a natural child rendition, but the child needs to have teeth.
They are natural because the perception of the child to sounds may have become more sensitive.
More to come...