Phonological Development

Question 1

The child begins cooing from as early as 6 weeks, exercising their vocal cords through

Answer 1

vocal play. This may involve open vowel sounds and prosodic alternation !

Question 2

Babbling begins at around 6 months, and is the most important stage in the child’s first
year of development. The child produces

Answer 2

reduplicated monosyllables, experimenting mainly with voiced bilabial plosives in a CVCV (consonant vowel) structure, e.g /bæ/ and /mæ/. This allows them to experiment with their organs of articulation !

Question 3

Babbling includes

Answer 3

! Babbling involves progression from phonemic expansion to phonemic contraction,
with the child producing some proto-words during jargoning

Question 4

Pettito et al. (2004)

Answer 4

found that deaf babies ‘sign-babble’, replicating the rhythm and
stress patterns in standard signing

Question 5

Volterra and Erting (1990): gestures

Answer 5

Gesture usage precedes language production and provides a

‘cognitive bridge’ between comprehension and production

Question 6

Holophrastic- child is likely to adopt a variety of simplification strategies, such as

Answer 6

Deletion of unstressed syllables or final consonants!
Assimilation through consonant or vowel harmony!
Addition of diminutive forms or syllables through reduplication! Consonant cluster reduction!
Substitution of one phoneme for another!

Question 7

Berko and Brown (1960): Fis phenomenon

Answer 7

• babies hear others correctly even if they ! don’t pronounce a word correctly themselves!

Question 8

Acquisition of phonemes!

Answer 8

Plosives and nasals are among the first to be acquired, usually bilabial first!
• Fricatives, affricates and approximants are among the last to be acquired !
• The voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ is typically the last to be acquired; some children ! may struggle with it at 8 years old!