The acquisition of liquids by Romanian-speaking children: a longitudinal study

The study aims at describing the patterns of acquisition of the liquid consonants (/l/ and /r/) by four young monolingual Romanian-speaking children (three boys and a girl). Both the 'emergence' (i.e. the first appearance) and 'stabilisation' (i.e. the consistent production) of the two liquids will be examined, the framework of the analysis being Slobin's 'developmental universals' and 'particulars' (Slobin 1985). The findings reveal that, to a large extent, Romanian children adopt similar strategies in dealing with challenging targets as their peers acquiring other languages (such as English, German or Italian), but also strategies determined by language-specific features or individual preferences.