In this study I investigate patterns of consonant harmony in Dutch,
which appear to be at odds with consonant harmony data from other
languages such as English and French. In order to achieve this, I
undertake a recompilation of the original Dutch data. I examine two
individual case studies involving children from a corpus documenting
phonological development in Dutch. I describe these case studies from
both qualitative and quantitative perspectives in order to provide a
representative account of the factors driving harmony. This study
reveals that a series of production strategies exist (mainly segmental
substitutions) that are independent from harmony itself, but that result
in harmonized forms. I demonstrate that the tendencies observed in the
data are largely predictable from the general phonotactics of the
language which appear to affect the analysis children make of their
language and, as such, yield the production strategies observed in the
data.