Phonological Development - Lecture 2

Question 1

What’s phonological development?

Answer 1

This lecture deals with how children develop the ability to use and understand the sounds of language.

Question 2

What happens during the first year?

Answer 2

1. The phonological development that occurs during the first year of a child’s life was outlined last week:
   - Crying
   - Cooing
   - Babbling
   - Phonemic expansion and contraction

Question 3

Why should you not make sweeping generalisations? (2)

Answer 3

1. Order in which vowels and consonants are acquired varies from child to child.
2. Sometimes children appear to have mastered a sound in one word, but then not in another.

Question 4

Name the general trends for different age groups… (3)

Answer 4

1. Age 2 ½ : all vowels and 2/3 of consonants mastered.
2. Age 4: difficulty with only a few consonants.
3. Age 6-7: confident use.

Question 5

Define the general trend, frequency

Answer 5

generally, sounds which occur frequently in a large number of words will be acquired before sounds that occur less frequently.

Question 6

Name 4 versions of phonemic simplification (4)

Answer 6

1. Deletion
2. Final consonants may be dropped.
3. Unstressed syllables are often deleted.
4. Consonant clusters are reduced.
5. Substitution, easier sounds are substituted for harder ones

Question 7

Give 4 examples of substitution (4)

Answer 7

1. ‘r’ becomes ‘w’
2. ‘th’ becomes ‘d’, ‘n’ or ‘f’
3. ‘t’ becomes ‘d’
4. ‘p’ becomes ‘b’

Question 8

What’s the same for phonological development as it is for language development?

Answer 8

comprehension is often ahead of speech

Question 9

Give an example of the fis phenomenon

Answer 9

Child: fis
Adult: This is your fis?
Child: No-my fis.
Adult: Oh, this is your fish.
Child: Yes, my fis.

Question 10

Who created the fis phenomenon?

Answer 10

Berko and Brown (1960)

Question 11

Explain 2 conclusions we can make about phonological development and the fis phenomenon (2)

Answer 11

1. This shows that although the child could not produce the phoneme /ʃ/ (sh), he could perceive it as being different from the phoneme /s /.
2. This has important implications for the acquisition of phonology. In short, it means that children have more, not fewer, phonological processes (or rules) applying in their speech than adults: therefore, part of the task of acquiring a language is figuring out which processes to allow to apply and which to suppress.

Question 12

Describe Berko and Brown 1960 (2)

Answer 12

1. Child with indistinguishable pronunciation of:
   - mouse/mouth
   - cart/card
   - jug/duck
2. Could point to corresponding pictures in a comprehension task.

Question 13

Describe intonation (2)

Answer 13

1. As a child grows older, a wider range of meanings is expressed through intonation.
2. Example: two-word stage:
   ‘my car’ versus ‘MY car’
3. Although intonation patterns can be reproduced from an early stage, understanding of their meaning is still developing into the teenage years.

Question 14

Describe Cruttenden (1974)

Answer 14

1. Football results.
   Intonation used in first team’s score enabled adults to accurately predict home win, away win or draw.
2. Children (aged 7-11): youngest were largely unsuccessful and oldest were significantly less successful than adults.

Question 15

Name three pieces of new vocabulary from lecture 2 (3)

Answer 15

1. Phonemic simplification
2. Deletion
3. Substitution