ABSTRACT
Experience is essential to the development of speech in the child, so we should ask of any psychological theory of speech how the effects of experience are to be accommodated. What does the theory have to say about how the child learns which phonetic distinctions are relevant in his native language and about how he adjusts to the phonetic capabilities of his own particular vocal tract as it changes in size and shape? As we show in this chapter, the more and less conventional views of speech account for such effects of experience in categorically different ways. Our aim is not to weigh these different accounts against the evidence, but only to use them to illuminate an important difference between the theories from which they follow.
