Why does a child acquiring English initially pronounce 'desk' as 'dess' or 'tek' rather than the adult pronunciation?

💡 Explanation

The simplified pronunciation occurs because children apply constraint ranking, favoring simpler syllable structures (CV) over complex ones (CCVC), such as reducing consonant clusters. Therefore, 'desk' becomes 'dess' by deleting /k/ or 'tek' via substitution, rather than the adult pronunciation because of developing phonological competence.

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