ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the deviation errors of initials from spontaneously produced speech materials generated by a Chinese child from the age of 1;02 to 3;00. Topics related to children’s initial acquisition have drawn attention from some researchers. The majority of research, however, has considered initial acquisition as part of the broad phonetic acquisition process and treated the learning of initials as part of phonetic acquisition. In young children’s language production regarding deviations of initials, both the type of deviations and the number of total instances change as a result of the development of their linguistic capacity. Deviations were confirmed based on a 70% or above agreement rate among the college participants in the discrimination task. However, although agreement on certain initials did not reach 70%, it was undeniable that these initials indeed exhibited trends of deviation. The two types of deviation, postposing and preposing, both happen in positions between dental, retroflex, palatal alveolar, and velar.
