Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016
In his recent dissertation, David Stampe (1972) discusses the notions of natural processes in child phonology. Earlier, Ingram (1971) discussed the concepts and formulations of phonological rules in child language. What we propose to demonstrate here is that the rules inherent in acquisitional phonology are ordered and, moreover, that these rules are ordered implicationally (in the sense of “unilateral implication” enunciated by Jakobson in discussing the stratified structure of the phoneme inventory). Our contention is that there are rules in child phonology, that these rules are ordered, and that while the entire inventory of rules does not appear in any child’s phonology, the presence of any one necessitates the presence of others - in a specific order.