Abstract
It has often been stated by linguists {e.g. Haas, 1963) that in making phonological analyses of children's speech it must be emphasized that at all stages of development the child has a system of his own and that it is misleading to regard his speech as “an imperfect version of adult language” (Fry, 1968, p. 19). This article suggests that over-emphasizing such viewpoints, particularly with regard to articulatory disorders, may be as unhelpful as the earlier disregard of functional factors (being “swamped by a mass of observations”) which such emphasis was intended to dispel.