phonological development in child language acquisition Flashcards
what are the patterns of development
- however, children do acquire sounds in a systematic way - there are patterns.
- no 2 children develop in exactly the same way
at what age do most kids feel confident that they have acquired all their consonants
a child could be 6 to 7 before they are confident that they have acquired all their consonants. some consonants are acquired before others such as ‘p’, ‘b’, ‘m’, ‘t’, ‘d’, ‘n’, ‘k’ and ‘g’
what are some patterns / trends in phonological development of children
- a child may use voiced stops for both the voiced and unvoiced stops in adult speech.
- children acquire sounds in a systematic way, and although they don’t use adult phonemes, there are usually identifiable patterns. - consonants are first used correctly at the beginning of words; consonants at the end of words are more diffucult.
- e.g. the sounds ‘p’ and ‘b’ in push and bush are easier to pronounce than those in ‘rip’ and ‘rib’ - in general, sounds that occur more often in words will be acquired before sounds that occur less oten.
- to make words easier to say, children simplify their pronunction in certain ways.
what is another way children gain phonological development
simplification : deletion
what is simplication : deletion in phonological development
children will often simplify pronunction by deleting certain sounds.
*final consonants may be dropped, e.g. the ‘t’ sounds in ‘hot’ and ‘cat’
* unstressed syllables are often deleted, e.g. ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’
* consonant clusters are reduced, e.g. ‘snake’ becomes ‘nake’, ‘sleep’ becomes ‘seep’
(consonant clusters; sequence of 2 or more consonants)(leaving one of consonants out is elision)
what is simplication : substitution in phonological development
with consonant clusters, some children resort to a single consonant that is neither of the sounds in the clusters e.g. [f] for [sp] in ‘spill’. it is a compromise sound that has characteristics of both consonants (/f/ has a fricative quality of /s/ and the bilabal quality of /p/)
1. fricative; a type of consonant sound procuded by forcing air through a narrow gap between 2 articulators (like how the sound is made, made with the tongue and teeth)
1. bilabal; means using “both lips”. it’s a type of sound made by bringing your lips together. (where the sound is made)
* some children may add a vowel between the consonants e.g. blue
* another form of simplification involves substituting easier sounds for harder ones. common examples;
- ‘r’ becomes ‘w’ (as in ‘rock’ or ‘story’)
- ‘th’ becomes ‘d’,’n’ or ‘f’(as in ‘there’, ‘that’ or ‘fumb’
- ‘t’ becomes ‘d’ (as in ‘toe’)
- ‘p’ becomes ‘b’ (as in ‘pig’)
what is simplication : reduplication in phonological development
this occurs when different sounds in a word are pronounced as if they are than the same sound.
- e.g. ‘dog’ becomes ‘gog’
what is understanding in phonological development
- comprehension of phonological patterns and all meanings they represent develops more quickly than the child’s ability to reproduce them.
- e.g. ‘fis’ phenomenon, shows the mismatch between awareness and production of sounds.
- berko-gleason and brown 1960, a child refers to a plastic fish as [fis], but when a parent asks if it is a “fish”, the child argues
- another study showed that a child’s pronucitation of ‘mouse/mouth’, ‘cart/card’ and ‘jug/duck’ were indistinguishable; however, they could point to pictures of the objects in a comphresive task.
what is intonation and stress in phonological development
children use intonation to express meaning in their first year e.g. rising tone at end of a ‘babble’ to suggest a question.
* as the child grows older, a wider range of meanings is expressed through intonation e.g. 2-word stage- ‘my car’ becomes ‘MY car’ (stress)
* although children can reproduce the ain patterns of intonation from quite an early age, understanding of the meaning of intonation patterns apparently is still development into the teenage years.
