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<font face="Arial, Helvetica">Thank you to all you responded to my query.
<br><br>
It appears that the use of a type of default syllable for unstressed
syllables is relatively common (just unfamiliar to me). The use of [ri]
for all unstressed syllables was documented by Neil Smith (1973) for his
son Amahl (pp. 172-173). In addition, Gnanadesikan (2004) reports a
child using <i>fi</i> as a replacement syllable in much the same
contexts. Several people reported that they have seen this commonly in
clinical practice and in child phonology research. Joe Stemberger
noted that many children show restrictions on initial unstressed
syllables when they first appear, noting that reduplication is more
common than default syllables such as my son is using. (Bernhardt &
Stemberger, 1998). <br><br>
What appears to be uncommon is my son's earlier use of "recycling
retruck". I still haven't a clue as to where that came from. Johanne
Paradis noted that her French/English bilingual son overused re, as in
re-see, re-put, but that use is at least semantically appropriate! This
earlier use of 're' was definitely epenthetic, and opened up a new slot.
I wonder if he was making the words in the phrase parallel in structure?
<br><br>
As for the choice of re- [ri], Patricia Donegan also speculates that
these might be idiosyncratic based on the initial unstressed syllables of
a child's favorite or perhaps first word, e.g., Ross's [mA] appeared to
occur first in [mAgini] 'Lamborghini' (a toy car). This is definitely
true for my son's re [ri] – recycling trucks were (and still are) a
favorite topic of conversation!<br><br>
The choice of 'default' syllable does seem to vary, as can be seen by the
variety of examples that I received that have not been reported in the
literature: <br>
Sharon Glennen reported that her son had a similar phenomenon at age 3,
but used "buh" ([b+schwa], I'm assuming).<br>
Brenda L. Beverly reported that her son (same age as mine) is using
[b+schwa] (the syllable of 'before') in words like 'bagot'.<br>
Karin Pollock reported her daughter using 'kuh' [k+schwa]<br>
Eve Clark wrote: "D doing something very similar, and opting for a
single unstressed prefix on words that required that. His was based on
the first syllable of 'forget' I think, and it turned up as 'fe-' (no
'r') on a variety of words as the 'default prefix'.<br>
Patricia Donegan wrote: "Two other cases I'm aware of are John (son
of David) Stampe's use of<br>
[tu] or [tA] for an initial unstressed syllable ([tutar] for guitar,
[tAkAmbAs tuhaido] for Columbus Ohio, etc.), and John Ross' son's use of
[mA] in similar contexts. Neither is, as far as I know, reported in
the literature, though."<br><br>
References: <br>
Bernhardt, B.H., & Stemberger, J.P. (1998). Handbook of Phonological
Development: From the Perspective of constraint-based nonlinear
phonology. San Diego: Academic Press.<br><br>
Gnandesikan, Amalia. 2004. Markedness and faithfulness constraints
in <br>
child phonology. In R, Kager, J. Pater and W. Zonneveld, eds.
<br>
Constraints in Phonological Acquisition. CUP. 73-108.<br><br>
Peters, A.M. & L. Menn. (1993). False starts and filler syllables:
ways to learn<br>
grammatical morphemes. Language 69, 742-777<br><br>
Smith, Neilson V. 1973. The Acquisition of Phonology: A Case Study.
CUP.<br><br>
<br><br>
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***************************************************************************************<br>
Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D. <br>
Associate Professor, Applied Linguistics<br>
Portland State University<br>
P.O. Box 751<br>
Portland, OR 97201-0751<br>
phone: 503-725-4140<br>
fax: 503-725-4139<br>
e-mail: santelmannl@pdx.edu (that's last name, first initial)<br>
web:
<a href="http://www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls" eudora="autourl">www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls<br>
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