Journal of Child Language

Table of Contents - 1981 - Volume 8, Issue 02  

Articles

Phonology and the development of the lexicon: evidence from children's errors*

Marilyn May Vihmana1

a1 Stanford University

Abstract

Various kinds of children's lexical errors, mostly based on similarity in sound, are presented and classified. At the earliest stage some children are found to pursue a HOMONYM STRATEGY, actively seeking to combine adult word-patterns to limit their output repertoire. The associations between words underlying these productive homonyms, together with perception-based errors, blends, and other word-substitutions, are compared with malapropisms from a slightly older group of children as well as with data from adults. Analysis of these data makes it possible to chart developmental changes in the phonological links which form one substructure of the lexicon.

(Received May 07 1980)

Footnotes

[*] I am indebted to Marlys A. Macken and David Barton of the Stanford Child Phonology Project for their perceptive criticisms of an earlier version of this paper, to Marvin J. Homzie for his rigorous remarks, and to Jan Sharpless and Nancy Moss for adding priceless data to my collection. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.