Development of Phonology Flashcards
Explain a Child’s Phonological Development in the Vegetative Stage (0-2 Months).
0-2 Months: Vegetative Stage:
- Before babies understand meaning they begin to make sounds, sometimes in response to what they are experiencing in the world around them + sometimes in response to what seems to be some sort of internal stimulus (e.g. baby may cry when they feel hungry).
- The moment a baby is born, often the first thing they do is make sound (crying).
Features:
- Cooing: sounds a baby will make like ‘goo’ + ‘ga-ga’, generally around 6-8 weeks. Believed that during this period the child is discovering their vocal cords.
- First laughter
- Changes in pitch + loudness.
Explain a Child’s Phonological Development at 6 - 9 Months.
Features:
-Babbling
-Extending sounds so they are like syllables
-Repeated patterns
- As time goes on, baby’s capacity to produce sound becomes more wide-ranging + complex (known as phonemic expansion)
-Phonemic expansion: the variety of sounds a child can produce increases. - As voice box develops + muscular control increases, in addition to their early ‘vegetative’ noises, baby starts to modulate the sounds it produces so that a greater diversity of sound appears.
- 9 months- crucial age- up until that age all babies are potentially international in terms of the range of sounds they are able to make. After 9 months, the sounds of the language they hear around them start to dominate (called phonemic contraction).
- Phonemic Contraction: the sounds a child can make are reduced so that they can only make the sounds of their own language.
- Once phonemic contraction has occurred, babies from different speech communities start to sound diff; depending on what language input they’ve received, some sounds will be emphasises + others discarded.
- Babies extend their earliest sounds (cooing) to a slightly more complex range of sounds, known as babbling, when they are about 6 months old. Combinations of sounds start to emerge, some of which resemble adult speech. Sometimes baby repeats sound- ‘baba’ is a common one (example of reduplicated monosyllable)
-Reduplicated monosyllable: the repetition of a sound such as ‘ba ba’.
Define Phonemic Expansion.
Phonological Development: 6 - 9 Months
- Phonemic expansion: the variety of sounds a child can produce increases.
Define Phonemic Contraction.
Phonological Development: 6 - 9 Months
- Phonemic Contraction: the sounds a child can make are reduced so that they can only make the sounds of their own language.
Define a Reduplicated Monosyllable.
Phonological Development: 6 - 9 Months
- Reduplicated monosyllable: the repetition of a sound such as ‘ba ba’.
Explain a Child’s Phonological Development at 9 - 12 Months.
9-12 Months:
- Baby gradually starts to gain more control over sounds they make + may make sounds even when alone.
- Vowels tend to be easier to say than consonants. By 30-40 months, baby likely to have mastered only 2/3 of consonants, but able to form whole range of vowel sounds.
- After babbling comes speech; baby starts making sounds that may not be recognisable out of context, but which are accurate enough for those around to identify what the baby means (these utterances known as proto-words).
- Proto-words: clusters of sounds (e.g. ‘da’) that represents baby’s attempt to articulate specific words when their motor coordination is still in early stages of development.
- As time goes on, further sounds are acquired. Consonant sounds such as ‘b’ come first as they can be formed relatively easily.
= Consonant clusters are more challenging + infants of 1-2 years may struggle, resulting in formations such as ‘gy’ instead of ‘sky’.
- Consonant clusters: groups of consonants (e.g. ‘str’ or ‘gl’) that demand more muscular control than single consonants or vowels, so tend to appear later in baby’s utterances.
- Children transpose sounds/omit them, because their capacity to form specific phonemes is not yet in place.
Define Proto-words.
Phonological Development: 9 - 12 Months
- Proto-words: clusters of sounds (e.g. ‘da’) that represents the baby’s attempt to articulate specific words when their motor coordination is still in early stages of development.
- Sounds that may not be recognisable out of context, but which are accurate enough for those around to identify what the baby means
Define Consonant Clusters.
Phonological Development: 9 - 12 Months
- Consonant clusters: groups of consonants (e.g. ‘str’ or ‘gl’) that demand more muscular control than single consonants or vowels, so tend to appear later in the baby’s utterances.
- Children transpose sounds/omit them, because their capacity to form specific phonemes is not yet in place.
Define Addition.
‘Virtuous Error’ in a Child’s Phonological Development
- Addition: adding to words; reduplication of sounds also occurs commonly
- E.g. ‘Moo moo’
Define Deletion.
‘Virtuous Error’ in Child’s Phonological Development
- Deletion: method of simplification ‘Pi’ for ‘pig’; ‘ca’ for ‘cat’. Unstressed syllables may be removed, e.g. ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’.
- Consonant clusters may be reduced: ‘nail’ for ‘snail’; ‘seep’ instead of ‘sleep’.
Define Substitution.
‘Virtuous Error’ in a Child’s Phonological Development
- Substituting easier sounds for harder ones
- Examples: r in rock become w, t as in toe becomes d, p as in pig becomes b
Define Assimilation.
‘Virtuous Error’ in a Child’s Phonological Development
- Assimilation: different kind of substitution whereby child repeats a neighbouring sound (rather than using an easier one)
- Example: ‘doggie’ becomes ‘goggie’
