V.—§ 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage.
As the child gets away from the peculiarities of his individual ‘little language,’ his speech becomes more regular, and a linguist can in many cases see reasons for his distortions of normal words. When he replaces one sound by another there is always some common element in the formation of the two sounds, which causes a kindred impression on the ear, though we may have difficulty in detecting it because we are so accustomed to noticing the difference. There is generally a certain system in the sound substitutions of children, and in many instances we are justified in speaking of ‘strictly observed sound-laws.’ Let us now look at some of these.
Children in all countries tend to substitute [t] for [k]: both sounds are produced by a complete stoppage of the breath for the moment by the tongue, the only difference being that it is the back of the tongue which acts in one case, and the tip of the tongue in the other. A child who substitutes t for k will also substitute d for g; if he says ‘tat’ for ‘cat’ he will say ‘do’ for ‘go.’
R is a difficult sound. Hilary M. (2.0) has no r’s in her speech. Initially they become w, as in [wʌn] for ‘run,’ medially between vowels they become l, as in [veli, beli] for ‘very, berry,’ in consonantal combinations they are lost, as in [kai, bʌʃ] for ‘cry, brush.’ Tony E. (1.10 to 3.0) for medial r between vowels first substituted d, as in [vedi] for ‘very,’ and later g [vegi]; similarly in [mu·gi] for ‘Muriel,’ [tægi] for ‘carry’; he often dropped initial r, e.g. oom for ‘room.’ It is not unusual for children who use w for r in most combinations to say [tʃ] for tr and [dʒ] for dr, as in ‘chee,’ ‘jawer’ for ‘tree,’ ‘drawer.’ This illustrates the fact that what to us is one sound, and therefore represented in writing by one letter, appears to the child’s ear as different sounds—and generally the phonetician will agree with the child that there are really differences in the articulation of the sound according to position in the syllable and to surroundings, only the child exaggerates the dissimilarities, just as we in writing one and the same letter exaggerate the similarity.
The two th sounds offer some difficulties and are often imitated as f and v respectively, as in ‘frow’ and ‘muvver’ for ‘throw’ and ‘mother’; others say ‘ze’ or ‘de’ for ‘the.’ Hilary M. (2.0) has great difficulty with th and s; th usually becomes [ʃ], [beʃ, ti·ʃ, ʃri·] for ‘Beth,’ ‘teeth,’ ‘three’; s becomes [ʃ], e.g. [franʃiʃ, ʃti·m] for ‘Francis,’ ‘steam’; in the same way z becomes [ʒ] as in [lʌbʒ, bouʒ] for ‘loves,’ ‘Bowes’; sw becomes [fw] as in [fwiŋ, fwi·t] for ‘swing,’ ‘sweet.’ She drops l in consonantal combinations, e.g. [ki·n, kaim, kɔk, ʃi·p] for ‘clean,’ ‘climb,’ ‘clock,’ ‘sleep.’
Sometimes it requires a phonetician’s knowledge to understand the individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some specimens given by O’Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9), the following words: pell (smell), teeze (sneeze), poke (smoke), tow (snow), and formulate the rule: s + a nasal became the voiceless stop corresponding to the nasal, a kind of assimilation, in which the place of articulation and the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved, and the sound was made unvoiced and non-nasal as the s. In other combinations m and n were intact.
Some further faults are illustrated in Tony E.’s [tʃouz, pʌg, pus, tæm, pʌm, bæk, pi·z, nouʒ, ɔk, es, u·] for clothes, plug, push, tram, plum, black, please, nose, clock, yes, you.
V.—§ 4. Groups of Sounds.
Even when a sound by itself can be pronounced, the child often finds it hard to pronounce it when it forms part of a group of sounds. S is often dropped before another consonant, as in ‘tummy’ for ‘stomach.’ Other examples have already been given above. Hilary M. (2.0) had difficulty with lp and said [hæpl] for ‘help.’ She also said [ointən] for ‘ointment’; C. M. L. (2.3) said ‘sikkums’ for ‘sixpence.’ Tony E. (2.0) turns grannie into [nægi]. When initial consonant groups are simplified, it is generally, though not always, the stop that remains: b instead of bl-, br-, k instead of kr-, sk-, skr-, p instead of pl-, pr-, spr-, etc. For the groups occurring medially and finally no general rule seems possible.