Which phonological process involves replacing a sound produced in the back of the mouth with a sound from the front?

Velar fronting is the phonological process where sounds produced in the back of the mouth, specifically velar sounds such as /k/ and /g/, are replaced by sounds produced in the front of the mouth, notably alveolar sounds like /t/ and /d/. For instance, a child might produce the word "kite" as "tite." This process typically occurs in young children's speech as they develop their phonetic capabilities and move toward adult-like pronunciation patterns.

In contrast, cluster reduction refers to the simplification of consonant clusters into a single consonant, which does not involve the location of the sounds. Nasal assimilation involves a nasal consonant changing other sounds in a word to also become nasal, but it also does not pertain to the positional change from back to front. Diminutization refers to altering a word to make it smaller, often through adding a diminutive suffix, which is unrelated to the phonetic processes concerning speech sound production locations in the mouth.