An extra way in which infant’s pronunciation can deviate from the adult target language is via addition.
Infant addition is where the infant adds a vowel onto the end of the word or replaces the end consonant with a vowel. The vowel is usually a,e,o or u and rarely an I. Examples of addition can be seen in the following;
The word is egg and phonetic adult target is eg and the child’s will be eg-“uh”. In this example the child has added a vowel u to make the “uh” sound. A second example will be the word apple the adults target will be apl and the chills version will be apo in this example instead of adding a vowel the consonant has been replaced from l to o. A third example is the word blue. The adult target will be blu but the child’s b”uh”lu here half way through the word the child has added the vowel u to make the sound “uh”
The child does this due to the fact he can’t control his manner of articulation well enough, the words egg blue and apple all –
These words all involve of stopping the air the flow halfway or at the end of the word. Since the child can’t do this yet due to lack of experience of talking, the child adds a vowel or replaces a consonant with a vowel to help the air flow out. For example when saying egg after the word is said there is a short pause of air flow, the child cant do this and by adding the u/”uh” sound it gets to make the sound with releasing air.
A further way in which infant’s pronunciation can deviate from the adult target language is via deletion
Deletion is the removal of a stage of a word which usually involves consonant clusters. For example for the word behind the adult target is be-‘hind where the child’s version is hind in this example the “be” at the begging of the word has been deleted. Another example is the word without the adult target is with-‘out and the child’s version is out in this case the second stage of the word has been deleted. A third example of this is the word difficult the adult’s version is dif-l-kult and the child’s dif-kult. In this example the child has deleted the l.
The child does this because most children pick up there language through socialization via there parents. The words that the child’s use deletion on are words with unstressed parts or consonant clusters. For example in the word difficult (dif-l-kult), when the parent says this word to the child the l part of it is very voiceless (unstressed) and only when listening carefully can be heard. In this case this is why the child just says dif-kult as the child thinks this the correct version. How ever with the word without (with-out) the with stage is not unstressed but yet the child will still say out, this is because of the consonant cluster with the th sound this requires a complex movement in the mouth and many children have trouble with it until they grow older.
An additional way in which infant’s pronunciation can deviate from the adult target language is via substitution.
Substitution is where the a consonant is swapped with another consonant at the beginning or end of the word. An example where a consonant is swapped at the begging is zip the adults target is zip and the child’s version is dip. The z has been replaced with a d. An example where the consonant is swapped at the end of the word is the word fuzz the adult target word is fuz and the child’s version is fud. The z has been replaced with a d.
The child does this because the z a fricative manner of articulation, because of this the z is harder to say than the d. The d is substituted for the d because the d and z is a consonant pair which means they are pronounced in a related way, they both have the same point of articulation. The only reason it is swapped is for its easier manner of articulation.
One more way in which infant’s pronunciation can deviate from the adult target language is via gliding.
Gliding is where the liquid manner of articulation changes to a glide manner of articulation. This tends to happened at the beginning or the end of the word for example the word lady the adult version is lady and the child’s version is yady here the l has been swapped with the consonant y. An example where this happens in the middle of the word is the word horrible the adults target version is horabul where the child’s version is howabul or hoyabul. In this case the r sound has been changed to a w or a y.
The child does this because liquid sounds need complex movement in the mouth and therefore they find it a lot harder to produce these sounds for example in the word lady → yady. The L sounds requires a complex flick of the tongue from the upper teeth to the lower teeth. It is a lot easier to say a y which involves little movement of the tongue.