Boosters

Text (3;4.6)
May 12, 2019
 * 1) Cheung, Jin, and Hu (20;4.17, Chinese, 6′1″) tromp up the path to the Peak, taking turns pushing Fei Yen in her stroller.
 * 2) “It’s pretty nice out today,” Jin remarks.
 * 3) Cheung frowns, swats.
 * 4) “Besides the bugs,” adds Hu.
 * 5) Maaau (adult, solid grey, of average size) whines.
 * 6) “Besides the bugs,” Jin agrees.
 * 7) “Moekeetoes,” grumbles Fei Yen (3;4.6, Chinese, 3′1″). “I don’t wike moekeetoes.”
 * 8) Cheung frowns.
 * 9) “Our vaccines are up-to-date,” assures Hu.
 * 10) “But are /hers?”
 * 11) Cheung, Jin, and Hu pause.
 * 12) Fei Yen whines, bats at her eyes.
 * 13) “Kids get a few rounds of boosters, yea?” asks Jin.
 * 14) “Sounds about right.”
 * 15) “Anyone know /when?”
 * 16) Fei Yen waves her arms wildly.
 * 17) Maaau huffs.
 * 18) Cheung, Jin, and Hu try to remember.
 * 19) “Bad moekeetoes.” Fei Yen sticks out her tongue. “Moekeetoes, go pest tipets.”
 * 20) Cheung, Jin, and Hu turn around and push Fei Yen and her stroller down the path to the train.

Analysis
Fei Yen has acquired all of her early-developing sounds and most of her middle developing sounds, but late developing sounds, like /l/ (Hoff, 2010), remain difficult, so she fronts it to /w/ ("like" -> "wike" [7]).

Consonant clusters are still tricky ([6, 17]; McLeod et al., 2001) so she deletes the more difficult of the two (/sk/  -> /k/, /tr/ -> /t/, and /pl/ -> /p/).

Fei Yen's syntax and morphology is consistent with a child in Brown (1973)'s Stage Three of language development, working on grammatical notions like negations ("don't" [7]) and imperative commands ("go pest tipets" [19]). She has long since left Stage One and Stage Two, mastering elements like English word order ([6, 19]) and pronouns ("I" [7]), and regular plurals ("moekeetoe/s" [6, 19]) and relational meanings like attribute + entity.