Phonological process use and dissolution in the acquisition of Puerto Rican Spanish

The application of phonological process categories of Word Structure, Syllable Structure, Assimilation and Substitution, and of the specific processes within these categories, in early polysyllabic words of young children learning Puerto Rican Spanish were described and analyzed.;The influence of suprasegmental factors of the target language (stress, word length, and serial position of syllable), on the application and dissolution of process categories and specific processes were also studied.;Four children, of nineteen months at the beginning of the study, were observed every three weeks for eight months in a naturalistic environment and encouraged during play sessions to spontaneously produce polysyllabic words. Transcriptions of children's words reaching criteria were described in terms of phonological processes.;A developmental pattern was observed across children in terms of the relative use of process categories over time: Word Structure decreased systematically; Syllable Structure increased considerably before it started to decrease; Assimilations were kept relatively low across time and Substitutions showed a tendency to increase before they started to be eliminated. Individual differences were observed in terms of rate of development.;Suprasegmental factors affected process application. Word Structure processes were seldom applied in stressed syllables while application of Syllable Structure was greater for the stressed syllables. Word Structure and Syllable Structure categories decreased in application as the serial position of the syllable got closer to the end of the word. Substitutions tended to increase while Assimilations increased in the unstressed syllables in these positions. Word Structure processes increased as word length increased. Word Structure processes decreased over time for both stressed and unstressed syllables. Syllable Structure processes were maintained relatively constant, while Assimilations and Substitutions showed much variability.;It was observed that all processes and process categories were not eliminated in the same way, suggesting interaction among processes during the course of dissolution. The need to analyze Word Structure and Syllable Structure process categories separately was discussed in the light of the results.;Finally,the phonological processes applied by the children were found to be the processes applied by other children cross-linguistically. Variations were observed, however, in terms of frequency of occurrence and process interactions, suggestive of the influence of the target language in process development.