Converging evidence for underlying phonological representation in a child who misarticulates

The liquid, fricative, and affricate sounds in the phonological system of a single misarticulating child were the focus of converging analyses. These analyses included structured measures of perceptual and productive skills, language sampling, and acoustic analysis of seemingly homophonous forms. The results of perceptual and productive tasks indicated that the child's perception of certain sounds was superior to his productions, but for other sounds, productive skill was superior to perceptual performance. This child's errors of production could be attributed to nonadultlike underlying representations. A two-lexicon model of underlying representation best accounted for the data. The findings led to inferences about the child's underlying perceptual and articulatory knowledge of fricative, affricate, and liquid sounds.