Consonant Harmony in Child Language

Consonant harmony (CH) in child language production data has attracted a great deal of attention in the phonological literature. It has been defined as an “assimilation‐at‐a‐distance” process between consonants (Vihman 1978), in which consonants affect other, non‐adjacent consonants. The assimilating features in child language CH are mostly primary place of articulation features, like Labial and Dorsal, but cases where other features are involved have also been observed. Over time, several analyses of this phenomenon have been proposed in the literature, the nature of the analysis changing with the theoretical state of the art: a phonological rule (Smith 1973), autosegmental spreading (Menn 1978; McDonough and Myers 1991; Stemberger and Stoel‐Gammon 1991; Levelt 1994), a connectionist account (Berg and Schade 2000), and constraint interaction (Goad 1997; Pater and Werle 2003; Fikkert and Levelt 2008).