According to the chart for the ages of suppression for 'stopping', which fricative would be within the normal limits for a 5-year-old to suppress stopping?

• A. /s/
• B. /ʧ/
• C. /θ/
• D. /f/

Answer: (C)

The concept here is when a child should stop using the stopping pattern for fricatives. Stopping means replacing a fricative sound with a related stop sound (for example, producing a /θ/ as [t]). Each fricative has an age by which it’s normally no longer produced this way.

For the interdental fricative /θ/, the typical expectation is that stopping should be suppressed by around age five. So, at five years old, it would be within normal limits to no longer substitute /θ/ with a stop. The other options—/s/, /f/, and the affricate /ʧ/—are not expected to be fully suppressed at that age according to the chart, so they’d be less likely to be within normal limits for stopping by five.