Phonological Development

Phonological Development

1. Trends

   • Command of all the vowels is achieved before all of the consonants
   • by 2.5yrs: average child masters all vowels and 2/3 of the consonants
   • At four the child is likely to be having difficulty with only a few consonants
   • child may be 6/7 before all vowels and consonants are acquired
   • consonants first used correctly at the beginnings of words, but end consonants are harder
     • 'p' and 'b' phonemes in 'push' and 'bush' are easier to pronounce than 'rip' and 'rib'
   • generally, sounds that occur frequently in a large number of words will be acquired before less frequent phonemes

2. to make words easier, children simplify pronounciation in certain ways

   • ways of simplification
     • Deletion
       • process of omitting certain sounds
       • final consonants may be dropped ('t' phoneme in 'hat', 'cat' etc)
       • unstressed syllables often deleted ('banana' becomes 'nana')
       • consonant clusters reduced ('sleep' becomes 'seep', 'snake' becomes 'nake')
     • Substitution
       • substituting harder sounds with simpler ones
       • 'r' (rock, story) becomes 'w'
       • 'th' (there, thumb) becomes 'd', 'n', or 'f'
       • 't' (toe) becomes 'd'
       • 'p' (pig) becomes 'b'
     • reduplication
       • common phenomenon. duplicating certain sounds - 'dog' becomes 'gog'

3. Berko and Brown(1960)

   • fis phenomenon
     • child referred to a plastic fish as 'fis'. when an adult asked 'is that your fis?', they said no
       • when asked 'that is your fish', the child replied 'yes, my fis'
   • another child confused 'card/cart' and 'jug/duck'
     • when shown pictures of these things, they were able to correctly identify them
       • proves that understanding may develop faster than the ability to pronounce things

4. In English:

   • 26 letters
   • ~44 phonemes