THE SUBSTITUTION OF A CLICK FOR SIBILANTS - A CASE-STUDY

In the case study presented in this paper a 4-year-old English-speakin g girl showed an unusual phonological pattern of substituting a dental click for the sibilants /s, z, integral, 3, tintegral, d3/. After two intervention sessions this pattern was eliminated from her speech and all the sibilants were produced correctly. In addition to providing a n example of a child's contrastive use of a non-English segment, this case study provides evidence of a child's selection of a sound substit ute on the basis of its auditory rather than articulatory similarity t o the target phenomes. The rapid rate of change observed in the child' s phonological system seems consistent with a phonological learning mo del in which the child has adult-like underlying phonological represen tations.