Phonological Acquisition

Faculty: Dr. Brajesh Priyadarshi

Presenters:
Gunashekar S

Karishma Singh

Shilpa V

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Prerequisites to the acquisition of phonology:
a) Structural and functional development.
b) Perceptual development.
3. Stages of Acquisition:
a) Pre linguistic Stages: before first words.
b) Linguistic stages
i) Transition from Babbling to First Words
ii) The First Fifty Words
4. Phonological development during:
a) Preschool age
b) School age

5. Interdependencies between language acquisition, phonological

development and emerging literacy.

6. Research article finding

1. Introduction:
It is obviously true that the speech of young children differs radically
from the speech of adults, but that children end up speaking essentially
identically to their parents. It is equally, though perhaps less obviously,
true that this deviation from the adult norm is non-random is character,
and the child’s performance differs in regular and predictable ways from
that of his putative models. (Smith)

Phonological acquisition refers to acquisition of speech sound form and

function within language system. Earlier it was referred as speech sound
development which in turn refers to gradual articulatory mastery of
speech sound forms within a given language. Phonological development
on other hand implies acquisition of a functional sound system intricately
connected to a child's overall growth in language.

2.Prerequisites to the acquisition of phonology:

Children get to know insignificant sound variations as they learn that

streams of sounds differ every time they are uttered. Later on, they
discover phonological and phonotactic rules and start to combine sound
segments into larger phonological units such as suprasegmental units
while sequencing them.
❖ Structural and functional development:
As the child begins its journey from primarily crying behavior to
babbling and later to first word, both structure and function of
respiratory, phonatory, resonatory and articulatory mechanisms
must change considerably. These changes reflect in
transformation from prelinguistic to linguistic sound production.
฀ Respiratory changes:
During birth;
● Rest breathing approximates 30-80 breaths per
minute
● Paradoxical breathing is present.
From 1.5years to 3 years;
● Rest breathing reduces approximately 20-30 breaths
per minute.
 ● Respiratory control increasingly supports the
production of longer utterances during this time frame.

From 7 to 8 years;

● Rest breathing approximates 20 breaths per minute.

● Adult like breathing patterns will begin during this

time period.

฀ Phonatory and resonatory system:

● Downward displacement of the larynx and hyoid
bone.
● Loss of sucking pads present in the cheeks.
● Expansion of laryngeal and pharyngeal cavity.
● Thyroid cartilage enlarged more than cricoid
cartilage.
● Epiglottis becomes larger and more firm
● Arytenoids which were relatively larger in early
stages now begin to adapt both structurally and
functionally to other laryngeal structures.
● Vocal folds lengthened
● Enlargement of skull (mostly posterior and
vertical directions).
฀ Articulatory system:
● Tongue and lips acquire more length.
Fine tuning and co-ordination of lip, mandible, tongue and velar
movements for regular voice and speech production increasingly
acquired.

❖ Perceptual development:

All children start with making sounds in order to acquire their native
tongues. Even though Infants are able to discriminate minimal
differences in speech sounds within first few months after birth, their
auditory experience e begins even before birth.

1. Categorical perception: refers to the tendency of listeners to

perceive speech sounds according to the phonemic categories of
 their native language. Infants under 3 months of age can detect
place and manner of articulation for consonants.
2. Discrimination of non-native sounds in infants: infants up to 6-
8 months of age can discriminate between two non-native sounds
that are similar in their production but this ability disappears with
language exposure by 10-12 months according to few studies.
(Werker and Tees,1983)
3. Perceptual constancy: Is the ability to identify the same sound
across different speakers, pitches and other changing
environmental conditions and is seen in children from 5.5 to 10
months of age.
4. Perception of phonemic contrasts: refers to the ability to
associate minimally paired nonsense syllables to different objects.
This skill emerges and shows progression from 10 to 22 months of
age. (Garnika 1973)
5. Early perceptual abilities related to language development
and disorders: early perceptual skills are related to later language
development. Studies show evidence of later difficulties such as
dyslexia (Richardson, 2003).

3.STAGES OF ACQUISITION:
Child language development is commonly divided into prelinguistic
behavior, vocalizations prior to the first true words, and linguistic
development, which starts with the appearance of these first words.
This division is exemplified by the use of early non meaningful
versus later meaningful sound productions.
According to Jakobson, the division between the pre-linguistic and
linguistic phases of sound production is often so complete that the
child might actually undergo a period of silence between the end of
the babbling period and the first real words.
There is an overlap in the stages other even though different stages
are separately described.
Oller (1980) divides the first six months into three sequential stages;

฀ The phonation stage (0-1 month) - In this stage speech like

sounds are rare. The largest number of non-reflexive, non
distress sounds are the “quasi-resonant nuclei” which Oller
characterizes as vocalizations with normal phonation but
limited resonance, produced with a close or nearly closed
mouth. These elements give the auditory impression of a
syllabic nasal.

฀ The cooing stage (2-3 months) - In this stage velar like

sounds are produced with some frequency, but the rhythmic
properties of adult syllables and the timing of the articulatory
gestures for adult consonants have not yet been mastered.
Acoustically, the cooing sounds are similar to rounded back
vowels like /u/.

฀ The expansion stage (4-6 months) - In this stage the child

appears to gain increasing control of both laryngeal and oral
articulatory mechanisms. The child explores the vocal
mechanism through the playful use of squealing, growling,
yelling and bilabial trills. Fully resonant nuclei (adult like
vowels) begin to be produced in this period, as does “marginal
babbling”, in which consonant like and vowel like features
occur but lack the mature syllable timing characteristics of
canonical babbling.

฀ Stark’s stages are broadly classified into pre linguistic and

linguistic stages
a) Pre linguistic stages (before the first words):
1. Stage 1: (birth -2 months) - This stage is characterized by
large proportion of reflexive vocalizations. Reflexive
vocalizations include cries, coughs, grunts and burps that
seem to be automatic responses reflecting the physical state
of the infant. Vegetative sounds may be divided into grunts
 and sighs associated with activity and clicks and other noises,
for example, which are associated with feeding.
2. Stage 2: Cooing and laughter (2-4 months)- During this
stage cooing or gooing are produced during comfort stages.
Although these sounds are sometimes referred to as vowel
like, they also contain brief periods of consonantal elements
that are produced at the back of the mouth. Early comfort
sounds have quasi resonant nuclei, they are produced as a
syllabic nasal consonant or nasalized vowel (Nakazima, 1962;
Oller, 1980). From 12 weeks onwards a decrease in the
frequency of crying is noted and most infants’ primitive sounds
start to disappear. At 16 weeks, sustained laughter emerges
(Gesell and Thompson, 1934).
3. Stage 3: Vocal play (4- 6 months)- Stage 3 includes longer
series of segments and the production of prolonged vowel or
consonant like steady states. It is during this stage that infant
often produces extreme variations in loudness and pitch.
Transitions between the segments are much slower and
incomplete when compared to older children. In contrast to
stage 2, stage 3 vowels demonstrate more variation in tongue
height and position.
4. Stage 4: Canonical Babbling (6 months and older): Although
canonical babbling is the collective term for the reduplicated
and non-reduplicated babbling stages which usually begins
around 6 months of age, most of the children continue to
babble into the time when they say their first words.
Reduplicated babbling is marked by similar strings of
consonant vowel productions. There might be slight quality
variations in the vowel sounds of these strings of babbles, but
the consonants will stay the same from syllable to syllable.
Non reduplicated or variegated babbling demonstrates
variations of both consonants and vowels from syllable to
syllable. One might conclude from this description that these
 babbling stages are sequential in nature, a child first goes
through reduplicated babbling and then later non reduplicated
babbling. This has been documented by several researchers
(Elbers, 1982, Oller, 1980 and Stark 1986).
5. Stage 5: Jargon stage (>10 months) -This babbling stage
overlaps with the first meaningful words. The jargon stage is
characterized by strings of babbled utterances that are
modulated primarily by intonation, rhythm and pausing
(Crystal, 1986).
The productions during the end of canonical babbling stage cannot
be yet said to be true vowels and consonants of a particular
language system. Hence they are referred to as vocoids and
contoids respectively (Pike 1943).

Babbling and later language development: Infant diversity in

vocalization was measured by (1) the number of different
consonant-like sounds heard in their babbling,
(2) The number of structured CV syllables,
(3) The proportion of vocalizations containing a true consonant,
and
(4) The ratio of consonant-like sounds to vowel-like sounds
Summarizing the results of these methodologically varying studies,
it appears that:
1. Less language growth is seen in children with more vocoid-
babble compared to those with more contoid-babble.
2. Greater language growth is related to greater babble complexity.
3. Greater language growth is related to the increased diversity of
contoid productions.
The child’s segmental productions toward the end of the canonical
babbling stage:
Vowel-like sounds
Children from 1 to 14 months of age, there was a continued pre-
dominance of frontal and central over high and back vowel-like
sounds.( Davis & MacNeilage 1990).
Consonant–like sounds
The most frequent consonant-like sounds that predominate in the
late babbling stages were h, d, b, m, t, g, and w followed by /n/, /k/
,/j/, /p/, /s/ (Fisicelli, 1950).
Syllable Shapes
During the later babbling periods, open syllables are still the most
frequent type of syllables vcv, vcv ,cvcv structures, and closed
syllables were found to be very limited in number. ( Kent and Bauer
1985)

Bringing form and function together over the first 18 months of life .
A developmental profile
EARLY CAPACITIES

Function or Meaning Linked Form and Function Vocal Form

From Birth

CHILD AS Responds affectively to melody of voice CHILD AS

EXPERIENCER VOCALIZER
Attention is caught by Cries (controls
salient perceptual breathing and
events ; Moving faces voicing on out-
and voices breath)
From two months

CHILD AS
EXPERIENCER
Begins to selectively
attend to objects. Grunts with effort (holding head up) Produces vowels;
CHILD AS imitates own-
COMMUNICATOR repertoire vowels;
Smiles, frown , Social takes
responses conversational
(Primary turns
intersubjectivity)

From four months

CHILD AS CHILD AS
EXPERIENCER LISTENER
Recognizes objects Prefers the
(based mainly on melody of
motion) uninterrupted
CHILD AS ACTOR clauses , in infant-
Explores objects ( directed speech.
alternately looks, CHILD AS
mouths, touches) VOCALIZER
Explore vocal
range( squeals,
yells,
growls,whispers)
FIRST ADVANCES

From four months

CHILD AS Begins to show word comprehension (in CHILD AS

EXPERIENCER context only at first) LISTENER
Attention becomes Prefers to listen to
more voluntary and own language (
flexible based on prosody
,not segmental
pattern)

CHILD AS
VOCALIZER
Produces speech
– like syllables (
rhythmic jaw
movement)

BRINGING THE STRANDS TOGETHER

Between nine and 12 months

CHILD AS CHILD AS
EXPERIENCER LISTENER
No longer
Participates in discrimination
episodes of joint consonantal
attention ( passively at contrasts not in
first) ambient
language.

Responds to
familiar word
forms ( even out
of context)
Grunts with effort of focal attention.

CHILD AS
COMMUNICATOR
Communicates Produces words in priming context. CHILD AS
intentionally ( VOCALIZER
secondary
intersubjectivity) Develops a range
‘Shows , points ,gives’ of babbling (vocal
motor
Engages in single schemes(VMS))
pretend play acts
Imitates word
forms
TRANSITION TO LANGUAGE USE

Between 12 and 18 months

CHILDASEXPEERIENCER/COMMUNICATOR
and LISTENER/SPEAKER
REPRESENTATIONAL PRAGMATIC PREREQUISITES PHONETIC
PREREQUISITES PREREQUISITES
Engages in Use grunts to communicate (influence other’s Achieves stable
combinatory pretend focus of attention) production control
play acts. of two or more
VMS
Uses ‘substitute’ Develops
objects (symbols) consistent word
patterns (
templates)
REFERENTIAL LANGUAGE USE
Understand that words refer to categories
Uses words as symbols.

This table provides approximate chronological age ranges which is

divided into three strands of development in the first 18 months, as
follows where:
FUNCTION or MEANING traces the route from initial social
responses, broad attentional capacities and communicable needs
and feelings to a developing ability to process experience and to
initiate and control communicative situations( further distinguishing
the ‘child as the experiencer ‘ from the ‘child as actor’ or
communicator’)
VOCAL FORM traces the transformation of infant auditory biases
and vocal capacities into the first recognition and production of
words forms or phrases (further distinguishing the ‘child as listener ‘
from the ‘child as speaker’)
LINKED FORM and FUNCTION traces the emergence of the ability
to grasp verbally encoded meanings and to conceptualize them for
expression (‘ child as experiencer/communicator) as well as to
distinguish and recognizably reproduce conventional verbal forms(
i.e words and phrases; child as listener /speaker ).
Prosodic feature development (prelinguistic):
Prosodic features are larger linguistic units occurring across
segments that are used to influence what we say. The linguistically
most relevant prosodic features we realize in speech are pitch,
loudness, and tempo variations (which include sound duration).
They have specific functions and may be analyzed separately. If
combined, they constitute the rhythm of a particular language or
utterance.
Bruner(1975) labels these prosodic units place-holders.
These prosodic units fulfill a social function. Also seen as a means
to signal joint participation in an activity shared by the child and the
caregivers.
Intonational changes seem to develop prior to stress.
Various pitch contours appear earlier than the first meaningful
words, contrastive stress is first evidenced only at the beginning of
the two-word stage, or at the age of approximately 1;6.

Krohn (1963) defined prosody as the third element of speech.

 ● Coinciding with the canonical babbling stage, or starting at
approximately 6 months of age, the infant uses patterns of
prosodic behavior. Features shown are primarily intonation,
rhythm and pausing (Crystal, 1986). Acoustic analysis shows
that falling pitch is the most common intonation contour for the
first year of life (Kent & Murray, 1982; Snow, 1988a, 1998b,
2000).

● By the end of 1st birthday, they can identify the prosodic

variation in single word utterance thereby indicating semantic
contrasts.
.
b) Linguistic stages
(i) Transition from Babbling to First Words
This stage is a very significant milestone in the acquisition of
phonological system. It is at this stage that child moves from pre-
linguistic to linguistic stage. Several studies report that babbling and
first word resemble each other. (e.g. Boysson-Bardies & Vihman
’91; Davis & Mac Nielage ’90; Kent & Bauer ’85; Oller et.al ’76;
Stark ’86 etc).
The main characteristics of this stage are:

● Primarily monosyllabic

● Frequent use of plosives

● More of bilabial and apical productions

● Rare use of consonant clusters

● Frequent use of central, mid front and low front vowel

Time of initial production of words is usually referred to as ‘first

fifty ‘word stage’. This stage extends from one year of age to the
time when the child puts 2 words together at approximately 18-24
months.

ii) The First Fifty Words

Most define the first word as an entity of relatively stable phonetic
form that is produced consistently by a child in a particular context
and is recognizably related to the adult like word form of a particular
language (Owens, 2008). Thus, if a child says [ba] consistently in
the context of being shown a ball, this form would qualify as a word.
If, however, the child says [dodo] when being shown the ball, this
would not be accepted as a word because it does not approximate
the adult form.
Children frequently use “invented words” (Locke, 1983) in a
consistent manner, thereby demonstrating that they seem to have
meaning for the children. These vocalizations— used consistently
but without a recognizable adult model—have been called proto-
words (Menn, 1978), phonetically consistent forms (Dore et al.,
1976), vocables (Ferguson, 1976), and quasi-words (Stoel-
Gammon & Cooper, 1984).

During the first fifty-word stage, there seems to be large difference

between the production and the perceptual capabilities of the child.
The child’s perceptual, motor and cognitive growth, as well as the
influence of the environment, all plays indispensable roles in this
stage of language acquisition.

Characteristics:

✔ Phonemic variability within the child itself.

✔ The limitation of syllable structures and segmental productions

utilized. Certain syllable types clearly predominate. These are
 CV, VC & CVC syllables. Other syllable types also occur but with
less frequency.
In the course of phonological development children learn
contrastive words rather than contrastive phones (i.e. phonemes)
and this stage are called pre-systematic stage (Ingram, 1976).
Cruttenden identified two sub stages:

✔ Item learning: Child acquires word forms as unanalyzed units,

production wholes
✔ System learning: After the first 50 word stage system learning
occurs during which the child learns phonemic rules and
principles of language (Phonotactics)
The early portion of the item learning stage is known as the
holophrastic period, the span of time during which the child uses
one word to indicate a complete idea.
1) Segmental form development(linguistic):
-There have been phonetic variability and a limitation of
syllable structures and sound segments during the first 50
word stage (Ingram, 1989b; Ferguson & Farwell, 1975).
- Phonetic variability refers to the unstable pronunciations of
the child’s first 50 words (Stoel-Gammon & Cooper, 1984).
But some productions are more stable than the other.
- Certain syllable structures which predominate are CV, VC
and CVC. When CVCV syllables are present, these are full or
partial syllable reduplication.
2) Prosodic feature development (linguistic):
-The falling intonation contour still predominates, although
both a rise-fall and a simple rising contour have also been
observed (Kent & Bauer, 1985).
-Most important aspect in this stage is the prosodic
variations. The child includes pitch variations to indicate
differences in meaning.
For example /da da/- rising pitch on the first syllable was
realized when a noise was heard outside when daddy was
expected and /da da/- falling pitch as daddy entered the
room (Crystal, 1986).
-The prosodic features are also used to indicate differences
in syntactical functions. For example, a demand or question
is often signaled first by prosody, words are added later.

The following Prosodic Features associated with intentional

communication have been observed by Marcos, 1987

Age Situation Pitch Contours

10- 12 months First word, Falling; flat contour

naming, Labeling accompanied by
variations in
loudness or
falsettos or
duration
Eg, /de:/ for ‘there’

13- 15 months Requesting, Rising; high falling

attention seeking, contour beginning
recognition, with a high pitch
surprise, curiosity, and dropping to
greeting lower one
Eg, previous
example of /da
da/

Prior to 18 Playful High rising, high

months anticipation, rising- falling
emphatic stress Eg, rising
intonation on ‘ball’
to indicate that
 game is about to
begin

Around 18 Warning, Falling- rising;

months playfulness rising- falling
contour
Eg, falling- rising
contour on ‘no’ to
indicate as a
warning not do
that

4.Phonological development during:

Pre-School age:
In this section we will be discussing about the developing
phonology of children from approximately 18 to 24 months (the end
of the first-fifty-word stage) to the beginning of the sixth years.
It’s during this time that the largest growth within the phonological
system takes places.
- From 18 to 24–30 months of age, a child’s expressive
vocabulary has at least tripled from 50 to 150–300 words
(Lipsitt, 1966; Mehrabian, 1970), and the receptive vocabulary
has grown from 200 to 1,200 words (Weiss & Lillywhite, 1981).
- The transition from one-word utterances to two-word
sentences, a large linguistic step, is typically occurring at this
time. With the production of two-word sentences, a child has
entered the period of expressing specific semantic
relationships: the beginning of syntactical development.
 - A child’s phonological development at 18 to 24 months still
demonstrates a rather limited inventory of speech sounds and
phonotactic possibilities. At this time, speech and language
perception seems to precede production, children can now
identify single-segment differences between words. By the
end of the preschool period, an almost complete phonological
system has emerged.

Segmental form development (pre-school):

a) Vowels
● All the vowels in the language are mastered by 3 years of age
(Templin, 1957; Velten, 1943)

According to the Irwin and Wong (1983) data, children show

acquisition of [ɑ], [ʊ], [i], [ɪ], and [ʌ] at 18 months (if the criterion is
set at 70% accuracy).
● By 24 months, the only vowels that did not reach 70% group
accuracy were [ɝ] and [ɚ].
● By the age of 3, all the vowels were accounted for with
virtually no production errors.
● At age 4, the accuracy for [ɚ], [u], and [ə] dropped again to
less than 90%.

Another view of vowel acquisition is offered by Velten’s (1943) diary

studies;
● prior to the age of 21 months, her daughter used the [a] vowel.
● After a surge in vocabulary at 21 months, the vowel [u] was
added.

When this child is compared to Irwin and Wong’s (1983) data, large
discrepancies between the two become obvious.

b) Consonant:
Consonant acquisition has held a key position in speech-language
pathologists' (SLPs) decision making for children with SSDs, even
though the ability to speak encompasses a broad range of skills:
“perception, articulation/motor production…phonological
representation of speech segments (consonants and vowels),
phonotactics (syllable and word shapes), and prosody (lexical and
grammatical tones, rhythm, stress, and intonation)…intelligibility
and acceptability” (McLeod et al., 2013).

Shriberg (1993) analyzed data from 64 English-speaking children

with SSDs aged 3–6 years to indicate that early-8 consonants were
/m, b, j, n, w, d, p, h/, middle-8 consonants were /t, ŋ, k, ɡ, f, v, ʧ,
ʤ/, and late-8 consonants were /ʃ, θ, s, z, ð, l, ɹ, ʒ/.

Sander (1972) described “customary” versus “mastery” production

of English consonants based on research from Wellman et al.
(1931) and Templin (1957).

● Customary Production as “that point when a child is

producing a sound correctly more often than [s]he is
misarticulating or omitting it”, quantified as “where the
combined test average at the various word positions exceeds
50%”.
● Mastery Production as when a child “produces the sound
correctly at three different [word] positions”.
He included a now-famous figure of consonant acquisition
ranging from 50% to 90% production for children from ages < 2
to > 8 years where some consonants had less variability in the
age of acquisition (e.g., /p, m, h, n, w, b, f, j/ had the shortest
bars) and others had greater variability (e.g., /s/ had the longest
bar).

Kent (1992) reanalyzed the study of Sander (1972) to categorize

articulatory complexity of English consonants into four sets
describing the least (Set 1) to most (Set 4) complex groups:
 ● Set 1 [p, m, n, w, h]
● Set 2 [b, d, k, ɡ, f, j]
● Set 3 [t, ɹ, l, ŋ], and
● Set 4 [s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ, v, θ, ð].
He concluded based on these data that fricatives and affricates
were the most complex English consonants to articulate.
Recently, a large-scale review of the age of acquisition of
consonants was undertaken for 27 languages across 31 countries
from 64 studies reporting on a total of 26,007 children (McLeod &
Crowe, 2018). Across studies and languages,
฀ most consonants were reported to be acquired by the age of
5;0 (years;months); however, variation existed across
consonants and languages.
฀ Generally, plosives, nasals, and nonpulmonic consonants
were acquired earlier than trills, flaps, fricatives, and affricates.
PCC (percentage of correct consonants) was investigated in 15
studies of 12 languages with children, on average, achieving a PCC
of 93.80 by 5;0.

Mean age of acquisition of consonant phonemes across studies of

English-speaking children from the United States (n = 18,907) at
50% criterion (low bar), 75% criterion (circle), and 90% criterion
(high bar), From Crowe and McLeod (2020).
At the 75% criterion, Prather et al. (1975) indicated /θ, z, ʍ/ were
not achieved by 4;0 (48 months).
At the 90% criterion, Bankson and Bernthal (1990) indicated that
/θ, ɹ/ were not achieved by 6;11 (83 months), Prather et al.
indicated that /θ, ð, v, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʍ, l, ʧ/ were not achieved by 4;0 (48
months), and Wellman et al. (1931) indicated that /θ, s, z, ʒ, ʍ/
were not achieved by 6;11 (83 months).

Using the 90% criteria across 10 studies of typical speech

acquisition, the following English consonants could be classified as
(ordered by mean age of acquisition):
 ● early 13 (2;0–3;11) = /b, n, m, p, h, w, d, ɡ, k, f, t, ŋ, j/ (all
plosives, nasals and glides);
● middle 7 (4;0–4;11) = /v, ʤ, s, ʧ, l, ʃ, z/; and
● late 4 (5;0–6;11) = /ɹ, ð, ʒ, θ/

Phonological processes:
● According to natural phonology, there seems to be a time
frame during which normally developing children do suppress
certain processes. This approximate age of suppression is
helpful when determining normal versus disordered
phonological systems and can be used as a guideline when
targeting remediation goals.
● Bankson and Bernthal (1990b, p. 16) defined Phonological
Processes as “simplification of a sound class in which
target sounds are systematically deleted and/or
substituted.”
● A child is not born being able to produce all the sounds and
sound patterns of his/her language. As a child is learning how
to speak English, he will simplify sounds and sound patterns.
●

Stampe(1979), stated that “Phonological process refers to mental

operation that applies in speech to substitute for a class of sounds
or sound sequences presenting a common difficulty to the speech
capacity of the individual”.

The most common phonological processes that occur in

normal development are:

● Unstressed syllable deletion

● Final consonant deletion
● Gliding
● Cluster reduction
PHONOLOGICAL EXAMPLE GONE BY
PROCESS APPROXIMATELY
Pre-vocalic voicing pig = big 3;0
Word-final de-voicing pig = pick 3;0
Final consonant comb = coe 3;3
deletion
Fronting car = tar 3;6
ship = sip
Consonant harmony mine = mime 3;9
kittycat =
tittytat
Weak syllable deletion elephant = 4;0
efant
potato = tato
television
=tevision
banana =
nana
Cluster reduction spoon = poon 4;0
train = chain
clean = keen
Gliding of liquids run = one 5;0
leg = weg
leg = yeg
Stopping /f/ fish = tish 3;0
Stopping /s/ soap = dope 3;0
Stopping /v/ very = berry 3;6
Stopping /z/ zoo = doo 3;6
Stopping 'sh' shop = dop 4;6
Stopping 'j' jump = dump 4;6
Stopping 'ch' chair = tare 4;6
Stopping voiceless 'th' thing = ting 5;0
Stopping voiced 'th' them = dem 5;0
(Table from Bauman-Waengler, 2014)

Below are some phonological processes and their explanations:

Whole Word (and Syllable) Processes

Process Description Example

Reduction processes

Final consonant Deletion of final /ba/ for /bal/

deletion (disappears consonant in a word
by 3 yrs)

Unstressed syllable Unstressed syllable or /teto/ for potato

deletion (disappears weak syllable is
/nana/ for banana
by 4 yrs) deleted,

Reduplication A syllable or a portion /wawa/ for water

(disappears by 3 yrs) of a syllable is
/dada/ for doggie
repeated or
duplicated usually
becoming CVCV

Consonant cluster Cluster can be /top/ for stop

simplification reduced to one
/kin/ for clean
(disappears at member of the
consonant clusters or
with /s/ — 5
a substitution may
without /s/ — 4) occur from the cluster

Epenthesis A segment usually the /bəlu/ for blue

(disappears after 8 unstressed vowel /ə/
years) is inserted

Metathesis There is a /bæksIt/ for basket

transposition or
reversal of two
segments or sounds
in a word

Assimilatory Process

Velar assimilation non-velar sound /gək/ for duck

(disappears by 3 yrs) changes to a velar
/kaek/ for tack
sound due to the
presence of a
neighboring velar
sound

Nasal assimilation non-nasal sound /nənny/ for bunny

(disappears by 3 yrs) changes to a nasal
/məny/ for funny
sound due to the
presence of a
neighboring nasal
sound

Labial assimilation A non-labial sound /bεb/ for bed

(disappears by 3 yrs) assimilated to a labial
consonant because of
the influence of a
labial consonant

Segment Change (Substitution) Processes

Process Description Example

Velar fronting sound made in the /tar/ for car;

(disappears by 4 yrs) back of the mouth
/det/ for gate
(velar) is replaced
 with a sound made in
the front of the mouth
(e.g., alveolar)

Backing Sounds are /kæn/ for tan

substituted or
replaced by segments
produced further back
in the oral cavity than
the standard
production

Stopping (disappears Fricatives or affricates pun for fun; tee for se

by replaced by stops e
doo for zoo; berry for
/f, s/ — 3
very
/z, v/ — 4
chop for shop;
sh, ch, j, th — 5) top for chop;
dump for jump;
dat for that

Gliding of liquids liquid (/r/, /l/) is wabbit for rabbit; weg

(disappears around 6- replaced with a for leg
7 yrs of age) glide (/w/, /j/)

Affrication Fricatives are /t∫au/ for saw

replaced by affricates

Vocalization Liquids or nasals are /pIpo/ for people

(disappears after 3 replaced by vowels
yrs)

Denasalization (gone Nasals are replaced /bud/ for moon

by 3 yrs) by homorganic stops
(place of articulation
is similar to target
 sound)

Deaffrication Affricates are ship for chip;

(disappears by 4 replaced by fricatives zhob for job
years of age)

Glottal replacement Glottal stops replace /kæ?/ for cat

either intervocalic or
final position

Prevocalic voicing Voiceless consonants /debel/ for table

(disappears by 3 yrs) (obstruents) in the
prevocalic position
are voiced

Devoicing of final Voiced obstruents are /dᴐk/ for dog

consonants devoiced in final
(disappears after 3 position
yrs)
Prosodic Feature Development (preschool): When the child
begins to use two-word utterances, a further development in
suprasegmental usage is seen, i.e., contrastive stress. This term
indicates that one syllable within a two-word utterance becomes
prominent. It may be used to establish contrastive meaning (Brown,
1973).
1) Within a child’s two-word utterance, a single prosodic pattern
is maintained; the two words have a pause between them that
becomes shorter and shorter.
For e.g.: Daddy (pause) eat
Daddy (pause shortens) eat
2) Then, prosodic integration of the two words into one tone-unit
occurs. A tone-unit, or a sense-group, is an organizational unit
imposed on prosodic data (Crystal, 2010). Such a tone-unit
 conveys meaning beyond that implied by only the verbal
production. When the two words become one tone-unit (i.e.,
without the pause between them and with one intonational
contour), one of these words becomes more prominent,
usually louder and associated with an identifiable pitch
movement (Crystal, 2010)
For e.g.:
'Daddy 'eat (no pause, both stressed) -could indicate that
“Daddy should sit down and eat”.
'Daddy eat (first word stressed)- could indicate that “Daddy is
eating,”

Adultlike intonational patterns are noted prior to the appearance of

the first word, whereas the onset of stress patterns seems to occur
clearly before the age of 2. However, true mastery of the whole
prosodic feature system does not seem to take place until children
are at least 12 years old (Atkinson-King, 1973; Malikouti-Drachman
& Drachman, 1975).

School Age
By the time children enter school, their phonological development
has progressed considerably. At age 5;0, most of them can
converse freely with everyone and make themselves understood
clearly to peers and adults alike. Their phonological inventory is
nearly complete, and now this system must be adapted to many
more and different contexts, words, and situations.
Certain sounds are still frequently misarticulated, and some aspects
of prosodic feature development are only beginning to be
incorporated.
Segmental Form Development
o Mastery of Fricatives (/s/, /z/, /ʃ/) – 7 years to 9 years- Poole
(1934)
o Mastery of Liquids (/r/)- 7.6 to 8 Years – Poole (1934)
o 3 member clusters (spl, skr, spr) are mastered at 8 years of age
– Templin 1957
o Templin (1957) reported that /kt/ was acquired at 8 years of
age; however, this consonant cluster occurs both in
monomorphemic contexts such as act and morphophonemic
contexts such as lacked created by the past tense morpheme. It
is possible that morphophonemic clusters may be acquired later
due to their complexity
o Consonant clusters emerge but are not adult like even till 9
years of age
o Morphophonology emerges during school years and continues
up to 17 years of age
o Metaphonological skills start to develop by 5 – 6 years of age
o Spelling development occurs around 12 to 16 years of age
o Acquires more morphophonemic (sound changes that takes
place in morphemes when combine to form words) development
and elaborated derivational structure of a language.

1) Prosodic feature development:

- Prosodic feature assumes grammatical function.
- For example, intonation patterns to differentiate certain
statements and questions. ‘He is coming.’ and ‘He is coming?
- Contrasting stress in word level- this concept is learnt till 13
years of age.
- Using intonation and pausing to differentiate meanings. For
example, “She dressed, and fed the baby” meaning she first
dressed herself and then fed the baby versus “She dressed and
fed the baby” meaning she dressed as well as fed the baby.
Order of acquisition:

✔ Stops
/p/ , /b/: 2-3 yrs
Alveolar /t/ and /d/ develops prior to /k/ and /g/ and vice versa
also.
✔ Glides
/w/: 2yrs
/j/ : 3yrs
✔ Nasals
/m/ and /n/ : 3yrs
/ŋ/: 3-4 yrs
✔ Fricatives
/h/: 3yrs
/f/: 4 yrs
Remaining fricatives: 4-6yrs.
✔ Affricates: 6yrs

Phonological awareness:
Phonological awareness is “the ability to reflect on and manipulate
the structure of an utterance as distinct from its meaning”
(Stackhouse and Wells, 1997, p. 53) and is essential for the
development of reading and spelling (Gillon, 2004). It includes
phonemic awareness, onset-rime awareness, and syllable
awareness (Masso, Baker, McLeod, and McCormack, 2014)
As Dodd and Gillon (2001, p. 142) reported,
- The majority of 4-year-old children…will not exhibit phonological
awareness other than syllable segmentation and the emergence
of rhyme awareness.
- By 5 years of age, the following skills are established: syllable
segmentation, rhyme awareness, alliteration awareness,
phoneme isolation, and letter knowledge.
- Phoneme segmentation is one of the latest skills to be
established when children are 6 to 7 years old

Mastery of Phonological Acquisition:

● A few fricatives, the affricates and the liquids are not mastered
by all children until about age 7 or 8 years.

● Majority of children in first grade will have a well-developed

phonological system.
● Their production of most sounds will closely match the adult
model and their speech intelligibility will be around 90-100%
connected speech.
● Shriberg and Kwiatkowski (1980) reported that 4-year-olds
correctly produced 90% of consonant clusters in spontaneous
speech. In contrast, Smit et al. (1990) reported that very few
clusters had been mastered by 4 years of age, with the
majority being mastered at age 6 or 7 years, and the last
clusters not mastered until age 8 to 9 years.

5. Interdependencies between language acquisition,

phonological development and emerging literacy:
❖ Language acquisition is the natural process in which human
beings learn to speak or make meaning of a language based
on exposure to the natural environment. As young children,
we begin to learn to say words, phrases, and sentences by
imitating what we hear.
❖ A strong correlation between the phonological development,
especially segmentation skills, and later reading achievement
has been found (Clark-Klein & Hodson, 1995)
❖ Moreover, early language development, specifically the
perceptual processing of sounds, has been found to be one of
the strongest predictors of later reading acquisition (Lundberg,
1988).
❖ A sub category of metalinguistics, that is – metaphonology,
involves children’s conscious awareness of the sounds within
a particular language. It includes how those sounds are
combined to form words, thus it is related to reading.
❖ Phonological awareness (sub division of phonological
processing) which is one of the important metaphonological
skill- is an individual’s awareness of the sound structure. Thus
it is the conscious ability to detect and manipulate sound
segments, such as moving sounds around in a word,
combining or deleting sounds.Phonological awareness helps
children to make judgement about whether a word is part of
native language, to self-correct any speech errors or mis-
pronunciations, and to discriminate between acceptable and
unacceptable variations of spoken word.It uses a single
modality – auditory since it is the ability to hear sounds in
spoken words in contrast to recognizing words in written
words, which analyses a child’s coding abilities.
❖ Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness and
phonological processing are 3 different concepts where: -
● Phonological awareness is a general term refers to all
sizes of sound units, such as words.
● Phonemic awareness- refers only to the phoneme level
and necessitates an understanding that words are
comprised of individual sounds.
● Phonological processing- use of sounds of a language
to process verbal information in oral or written form that
requires working and long-term memory (Wargen and
Torgesen, 1987). It includes 2 broad dimensions coding
and awareness.
❖ Coding is translating stimuli from one form to another from
i.e.,from ayditory to written form or from written to auditory
 form and has 2 dimensions – phonetic and phonological
coding.
Phonetic coding: Refers to the ability to identify new sounds
and store in long-term memory.
Phonological coding: Representation and analysis of spoken
words in working memory.

Phonological coding takes place in 3 parts;

1.Written symbols are matched to the pronunciation of the
written word.
2.The pronunciation of the written word is matched with
pronunciation of words in memory.
3.Pronunciations of words in memory are linked with
meaning for retrieval of meaning and pronunciation (Wesseling &
Reitsma, 2000).
Thus, we can conclude that “Phonological awareness is a
sub division of phonological processing” and it is a
multilevel skill of breaking down words into smaller units,
described in terms of syllable awareness, onset-rime
awareness, and phoneme awareness (Gillon, 2004).
❖ Syllable awareness tasks (words divided into syllables) –
a) syllable segmentation (eg: mango- /man/ and /go/)
b) syllable completion (eg: man...... - /mango/)
c) syllable identity (eg:rainbow and rain coat - “/rain/”)
d) syllable deletion. (eg: rainbow, without “bow”- “/rain/”)
❖ Onset – rime awareness:
a) onset - all sounds prior to the vowel nucleus
b) rime- includes nucleus (syllable part) and coda.
Eg: “cat”- onset (/c/) and rhyme(/at/).
❖ Phonemic awareness tasks- phoneme detection, phoneme
matching, phoneme isolation, phoneme completion, phoneme
blending, phoneme deletion, phoneme segmentation,
phoneme reversal, phoneme manipulation, spoonerisms
Research article
 The Effect of Phonological Abilities for
Children in Communication
Yani Lubis, Nury Ana Harahap, Putri Nur Aisyah

Abstract

This research entitled "The Effect of phonological abilities for children in

Communication". The purpose of this study was to examine the impact
of children's phonological skills on communication. The purpose of this
study is to describe children's language acquisition in terms of
phonology, including the acquisition of vowels and consonants, and the
factors that influence phonological acquisition in communication. The
study data are conversations between subjects and their mothers,
grandmothers, and other family members and the community. Data
collection techniques were performed using recording techniques, notes,
and Google Forms. We then analyse the data obtained and use them to
conclude stages of language acquisition at the phonological, syntactic,
semantic and pragmatic levels.

7.References:

► Neilson V. Smith-(1973).The acquisition of phonology A Case Study.

Cambridge
► Bauman-Wangler, J.A. (2014). Articulatory and phonological
impairments A clinical focus. New York, NY: Pearson Education
► Marilyn May Vihman-(1996) – Phonological development ,the origin of
language in the child .Blackwell publishers
► Marilyn May Vihman-(2014) – Phonological development ,The first two
years second edition Wiley Blackwell
► Bowen, C. (1998). Developmental phonological disorders. A practical
guide for families and teachers. Melbourne: ACER Press.

► Gordon-Brannan, M.E., & Weiss, C.E. (2007). Clinical management of

articulatory and phonologic disorders. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
► https://jurnal.penerbitdaarulhuda.my.id/index.php/MAJIM/article/view/
442