Fortition and lenition patterns in the acquisition of obstruents by children with cochlear implants

This paper investigates patterns of error production in 10 children who use cochlear implants, focusing specifically on the acquisition of obstruents. Two broad patterns of production errors are investigated, fortition (or strengthening) errors and lenition (or weakening) errors. It is proposed that fortition error patterns tend to be related to the process of phonological development, because they are involved with universal implications and notions of markedness. Lenition error patterns, on the other hand, show more context-sensitive effects and reflect properties related to minimization of articulatory effort. The relationship between fortition and markedness is demonstrated in an optimality theoretic analysis, and it is further demonstrated that the observed characteristics of phonological development in children with cochlear implants are similar to those exhibited by children with normal hearing.