Acquisition of phonology Flashcards
What is phonology?
The rules governing the structure, distribution and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables e.g. sound substitutions, error patterns
What is phonetics?
The anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism. Knowledge of how speech sounds are produced e.g. knowing particular sounds are voiced/unvoiced, stops/fricatives
What is phonological awareness?
The knowledge of sounds and syllables, and the sound structure of words (how long the word is, initial/final sounds, manipulating sounds, rhyme etc.)
What are some features of the pre-linguistic development of phonology?
Auditory discrimination Preference for native language Cooing - sustained vowels and trills Canonical babbling – 6months e.g. “bababa” Variegated babbling e.g. “ta-da-bu-ba”
What is the difference between phonetic and phonemic acquisition?
Phonetic: the articulatory/motor skills required for the production of speech sounds
Phonemic: the functional/behavioural USE of the speech sound system i.e. when the sound is used correctly/incorrectly in words
What are some features of first words?
Reduplicated syllables
Restricted range of sounds
Thought to be learnt word by word (no awareness of sounds within words)
Describe the behaviourist model of speech acquisition
Traditional model – focuses on describing behaviours – e.g. fronting, backing, phonological processes
Stimuli and response – e.g. focus on “if I give the child a picture of a single word, they will be able to say it. If I ask them to say a phrase, they wont be able to say it. If I give them a cue/model they will be able to say it”.
Speech as a motor-based skill
Therefore assumes that children with SSD have breakdowns only at the motor output stage of S&W model
If child is not successful in task, then must use cueing hierarchy/modeling – behavioural interchange – feedback etc.
This kind of therapy works very well for kids with output-based problems
E.g.
Van Riper model of speech sound intervention
What is the natural phonology (Stampe) model of acquisition?
Natural processes occur for all children i.e. phonological processes are universal. Child’s representation is same as adult, however processes impact on how the child produces words (however we now know that this is not the case – children’s representations are not adult-like)
Natural processes are: final consonant deletion; velar fronting, palatal fronting, liquid simplification, cluster reduction, assimilation and unstressed syllable deletion.
Challenges:
Some children exhibit processes outside of those listed above
Representations in children are not the same as adults
Describe the optimality theory
Considers the relationship between the mental (input) representation and the surface (output) representation.
The rules that children know represent simplifications in the child’s representations – most children will front, stop, FCD – because they have not yet learned that some sounds are produced at the back of the mouth; that some words can have a consonant at the end.
When learning language, words are less complex than the adult form because the rules or constraints have not been learned.
