• a very early precess 
• usually during first 50 word stage 

• usually supressed by age 3 at the latest 
• other studies showed even earlier (2;2 &2;5)

• one study says by age 4
• another study says before 3

• this is a process that is suppressed relatively late
• is often seen in 5 year olds 
• sometimes seen as late as 8-9 years old (this is a smaller % of kids however) 

• common in preschool children, or up to age 5 
• example "pu-lease" 

• no general rule 
• depends on the fricative 
• different ones have stopping suppressed at earlier ages than others 

• one study reported suppression by age 3:6
• another indicated presence until age 5 

• extends beyond age 5 

• typically suppressed by age 3 

• unstressed syllable deletion 
• final consonsant deletion 
• consonant assimilation 
• reduplication 
• fronting (velar fronting) 
• prevocalic voicing 

these processes persist after age 3

• cluster reduction
• epenthesis
• gliding 
• vocalization 
• stopping 
• depalatization 
• final devoicing

• childs conscious awareness of sounds within a language 
• child ability to discen how many sounds are in a word or which sounds constitute the beginning of a word 
• eg. "this" "as" "dis" is spelling because of pronounces 

• children are still learning stress rules, etc into teen years 
• ex: even some teens may have difficulty with differences between "she dressed, and feed the baby" and "she dressed and fed the baby"