Phoneme Collapse

Question 1

phoneme collapse

Answer 1

• when a child uses a single consonant sound in place of other consonant sounds
• a phoneme represents itself, and also a set of other phonemes
• the more extensive the phoneme collapse the greater the impact on a child’s overall speech intelligibility

Question 2

another rule-based analysis

Answer 2

appropriate to consider when a child has a small range of phonemes in their phonetic inventory or a large number of errors

Question 3

IDEA

Answer 3

child is using 1 phoneme in the place of a collection of other phonemes (or clusters) including deletion

Question 4

steps in phoneme collapse analysis

Answer 4

1. look across your sample for a sound that was used frequently for other targets in word-initial, -medial, and -final positions
2. write the phoneme produced by the child under the specified position(s), and then diagram all of the target sounds that were produced by the child with that 1 sound

Question 5

write the phoneme produced by the child under the specified position(s), and then diagram all of the target sounds that were produced by the child with that 1 sound

Answer 5

• organize the sounds in some way (e.g., by manner categories)
• consider consonant clusters also when looking at collapses
• phoneme deletions might also be a collapse