This article honours Adele Miccio's life work by reflecting on the utility of phonetic transcription. The first section reviews the literature on cases where children whose speech appears to neutralize a contrast in the adult language are found on closer examination to produce a contrast ("covert contrast"). This study presents evidence…

Previous research has found developmental decreases in temporal variability in speech. Relatively less work has examined spectral variability, and, in particular, variability in consonant spectra. This article examined variability in productions of the consonant/s/by adults and by 3 groups of children, with mean ages of 3;11 (years; months), 5;04,…

Research has shown that children repeat high-probability phoneme sequences more accurately than low-probability ones. This effect attenuates with age, and its decrease is predicted by developmental changes in the size of the lexicon (J. Edwards, M. E. Beckman, & B. Munson, 2004; B. Munson, 2001; B. Munson, J. Edwards, & M. Beckman, 2005). This…