Week 5 - Speech Development Flashcards
2 topics covered this week:
- Acquisition of speech sounds (phonetics)
- Organisation of speech sounds (phonology)
Reading: E. Clarke “1st Language Acquisition” ch. 5
Learning outcomes for week 5:
- Identify the order of acquisition of speech sounds in English
- Develop understanding of the phonological processes identified in child speech
- Develop skills in observation and analysis by identifying speech sounds in a data sample
- Develop skills in observation and analysis by identifying phonological processes in a speech sample
- Consider the effect on phonological development when two or more languages are being learned
Why can’t speech development just be looked at as a part of language development? Why does it have to be examined separately?
They do overlap (ie. phonology is part of linguistic knowledge and phonetic knowledge) but….
- They are distinct elements of a child’s communicative repertoire - speech is just one modality for expressing language. Important to maintain that distinction.
- Children can present with speech sound disorders, but have intact language skills (and vice versa)
What kind of knowledge is particularly important to be able to identify absent skills or atypical development.
Knowledge of MILESTONES!
How does knowledge of milestones inform planning of intervention?
If there are speech errors, what (identified through absent skills or atypical dev’mnt through sound knowledge of milestones)? And how should we target them?
How are speech sound disorders implicated in later literacy disorders?
as many as 75% of children with speech sound disorders have been found to have later academic difficulties - particularly literacy difficulties.
Structurally, why can’t an infant produce speech sounds like an adult?
At birth the infant vocal tract looks more like an ape than a human. Tip of velum reaches or overlaps with the tip of the epiglottis. By about 4 months shape and structure of infants vocal tract has matured - this roughly coincides with the point that infants begin to produce speech-like sounds.
First attempts at words:
Consistent vocalisations, often combined with systematic gestures (ie reaching for an object combined with [m] sound). Emerge around 12 months. Replaced as children produce recognisable (but not nec. adult-like, words)
What do children do when beginning to produce (not adult-like) recognisable words?
- Focus on contrast ie C vs V, High Vowels Vs Low vowels, oral Vs nasal (child works on a system of contrasts that gradually narrows).
- Focus on word production, NOT single sound segments (more wholistic approach)
Capacity to articulate sounds can take longer to achieve (more complicated motor programme) than the recognition of the sound contrasts - higher receptive than expressive.
Child: Fis Adult: This is your fis? Child: No, my fis. Adult: Oh, this is your fish. Child: Yes, my fis.
Considerable variation in what happens after first word emergence. For example, some children…
- …slow and steady, working on articulation of words that they have.
- Others add to vocab very quickly
- Others stall on adding words but are adding to sound inventory
Early language learners pronunciations are related to the adult forms in systematic ways.
Not random, but analyzable in terms of complexity of the adult sounds and child’s (or inability) ability to produce those sounds. Because they are systematic, we can write rules to explain the process.
Most common types of error patterns in early word pronunciation:
- Processes that modify the structure of the syllable.
- Processes that substitute one sound for another.
- Processes that assimilate one sound to another, or. processes that make one sound more like another one (in terms of its phonetic features).
[These 3 processes have in common that they nearly always simplify the adult word in one form or another]
Syllable structure processes:
- Unstressed syllable Deletion - children delete the unstressed syllable eg nana for ‘banana’, mato for ‘tomato’
- Final consonant deletion - C/cluster at end of word deleted. eg. ha for ‘hat’, pa for ‘park’
- Reduction of consonant clusters. eg. bed for ‘bread’, tap for ‘strap’
Substitution processes (one sound is substituted for another, either a class of sounds, or just individual sounds).
- Substitution of a glide for a liquid - r and l, (liquids) are often replaced by j or w. eg yeg for ‘leg’, wabbit for ‘rabbit’
- Substitution of a stop for a fricative - stops (p t k b d g) replace fricatives. eg. tee for ‘see’, dis for ‘this’
- Substitution of t and d for k and g (fronting). eg do for ‘go’, ti for ‘key’
