Long-distance place assimilation with an interacting error pattern in phonological acquisition

Abstract

Two commonly occurring and independent error patterns in children's early speech are examined to determine how and to what extent they might interact. One error pattern replaces velar consonants with coronals, and the other replaces a coronal with a consonant that agrees in place of articulation with some other consonant elsewhere in the word. A range of interactions is observed within and across children with regard to whether the product of one error pattern can serve as the target of the other. The different interactions motivate different claims about the nature and substance of children's underlying representations, which in some cases may differ from those of the ambient system. An extension to underspecification theory is advanced which allows underlying representations to be radically underspecified and in certain cases also to be specified for a default feature.