the study and analysis of phonological processes in 2-4 year old farsi speaking children of tehran based on articulatory phonology

in order to simplify the pronunciation ofthe adult's words,children use phonological processes inthe initial years oftheir speech growth.the present study aims at considering phonological processes ina group oftwo tofour-year old farsi speaking children.the results indicate that itisnot possible to correctly and precisely account forthe occurrences ofsuch processes in children’s pronunciation based on the theory of generative phonology.in contrast articulatory phonology is an amalgamation of phonology andphonetics where we are confronted with articulatory gestures which are activated through time.the exact time and place of each gesture’s production arethus detectable in indices of gestures.this study is conducted using analytical and field research methods. children use all the phonological processes suchas unstressed syllable,final consonant deletion,reduplication,consonant harmony,cluster reduction,stopping, fronting,gliding,initial consonant deletion,epenthesis etc.this paper presents the average occurrence percentage of the processes and their highest and lowest occurrences in each ofthe studied age groups separately.it alsoanalyzes the relationship betweenage and each of the processes.