The study examined the speech production strategies used by 4 young children (30- to 32-months-old) with cleft palate and velopharyngeal inadequacy during the early stages of phonological learning. All the children had had primary palatal surgery and were producing primarily single word utterances with a few 2- and 3-word phrases. Analysis of each child's speech indicated the children's speech was unlike like that of non-cleft children in that they frequently substituted the more open sonovant consonants for the more closed obstruents, oral stops were frequently nasalized or produced with a secondary glottal constriction, and the place of articulation was maintained only for labials. The children's speech tended to be like that of non-cleft children in substituting stops for fricatives, in often preserving both voicing and place of articulation and in such phonological processes as assimilation and consonant reduction. Three references. (DB)