Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of the main phonetic and phonological adjustments of the phoneme /s/, in ten Costarican children ages 2 to 4, during individual interviews of spontaneous speech. The results show that the group of younger children makes some characteristic adjustments of children’s speech (like the oclusivization of /s/) more frequently. On the other hand, some allophones of /s/, which are more common on adult speech, are more frequent in the group of older students. However, not only did the adjustments have a phonologic or age motivation, but also they depend on individual factors. Some of these factors are tooth development, refinement of articulatory abilities, and the process of acquisition of the standard Costarican Spanish phonological model.

Key Words: fricative alveolar phoneme; phonetic-phonological adjustments; children’s speech; phonetics; phonology.