Natural Phonology or Natural Memory? the Interaction Between Phonological Processes and Recall Mechanisms

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
An analysis of the attempts by 90 children between the ages of four and nine to learn a number of new words revealed that their recall errors were remarkably similar to the phonological deformations found in the speech of young children in the early stages of language development. Two complementary explanations are put forward to account for the observed similarities: phonological processes noted in the speech of young children may reflect recall problems, and recall in all children may be related to perceptual salience, since perceptually salient features are likely to be those most strongly encoded in auditory memory. We point out that the role of memory, which has been virtually ignored by linguists, clearly needs to be taken into consideration.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: