Consonant Epenthesis in Greek Child Speech: A Phonological Perspective

In this paper a less well-studied process is discussed, namely, segmental insertion in child language. The main question of the study is why children use consonant epenthesis in their speech. Our assumptions are based on picture naming and spontaneous speech collected from four monolingual Greek-speaking children varying in age from 1;6.26 to 2;10.9. Their data reveal that it is a systematic process which helps them simplify their speech by forming unmarked structures (Oller, 1974). The position of the epenthetic segment as well as its quality are also examined. We observe that an epenthetic consonant is inserted at the left or right edge of the word in order for an unmarked CV syllable to emerge. In a few cases with cluster simplification, a consonant is inserted to the syllable that does not contain the cluster in order to maintain in number all the segments of the adult’s form. Further, the epenthetic segment, which arises in one of the two edges of the word, constitutes a full copy of a consonant located at the other edge. This interaction seems to support the view that edgemost syllables are psycholinguistically prominent positions (e.g., Pater, 1997, Smith, 2002) and children tend to pay more attention to them (Slobin, 1973). For the analysis of children’s tokens, Optimality Theory is adopted (Prince & Smolensky, 1993) and how this model can account for all the properties presented in consonant epenthesis is explained.