Patterns which partly resemble the proposed "fronting,""voicing," and "stopping" tendencies exist to a statistically significant degree in David Olmsted's large sample of child speech. Instead of the "voicing" pattern that has been suggested, however, voiced stops seem to be favored word-initially, but voiced fricatives are favored word-finally. Comparison with data from the informal speech of older children suggests that a major part of these tendencies can be explained by the differential opportunity to practice various features in various word positions provided by English. The rank order of the phrase-initial/final frequency rations of these phonemes in informal speech is similar to the rank order of word-initial/ final rate of acquisition ratios of Olmsted's children. The same comparison between rank order of frequencies and rank order of rates of acquisition can be made with respect to overall relative acquisition rates and frequencies. It is striking that Olmsted's children tend to acquire velar obstruents more readily than alveolars, in contrast to observations from European acquisition literature drawn upon by Roman Jakobson in constructing his perceptual theory of acquisition. (Author/CLK)