Word-initial rhotic clusters in Spanish-speaking preschoolers in Chile and Granada,Spain

ABSTRACT

The current paper describes Spanish acquisition of rhotic onset clusters. Data are also provided on related singleton taps/trills and /l/ as a singleton and in clusters. Participants included 9 typically developing (TD) toddlers and 30 TD preschoolers in Chile, and 30 TD preschoolers and 29 with protracted phonological development (PPD) in Granada, Spain. Results showed age and developmental group effects. Preservation of cluster timing units preceded segmental accuracy, especially in stressed syllables. Tap clusters versus singleton trills were variable in order of mastery, some children mastering clusters first, and others, the trill. Rhotics were acquired later than /l/. In early development, mismatches (errors) involved primarily deletion of taps; where substitutions occurred, [j] frequently replaced tap. In later development, [l] more frequently replaced tap; where taps did occur, vowel epenthesis sometimes occurred. The data serve as a criterion reference database for onset cluster acquisition in Chilean and Granada Spanish.     

Word-initial /r/-clusters in Icelandic-speaking children with protracted versus typical phonological development

ABSTRACT

Rhotics are generally acquired late across languages (Jiménez, 1987; Tar, 2006; Blumenthal and Lundeborg, 2014). Prior research suggests some possible differences in acquisition across languages, however (Másdóttir and Stokes, 2016). The current study set out to examine acquisition of /r/ in Icelandic, focusing primarily on match (accuracy) and mismatch data for word-initial (WI) /r/-clusters, but also comparing /r/-clusters with WI singleton /r/ and /l/ plus /l/-clusters. Single-word data were collected for 27 Icelandic-speaking preschoolers with protracted phonological development (PPD) and compared with data from age- and gender-matched typically developing peers. Results showed lower match levels for clusters versus singletons, /r/ versus /l/ and the children with PPD. Most frequent substitutions were approximant [ð?] and [l]. Younger children with PPD showed more deletion in clusters and a greater variety of substitutions for both consonants. The data support general cross-linguistic trends in rhotic acquisition with the [ð?] substitution being one difference.     

Word-initial trill clusters in children with typical versus protracted phonological development: Bulgarian

ABSTRACT

The current paper describes acquisition of word-initial (WI) trilled /r/ in clusters and as a singleton in 60 Bulgarian 3–5-year-olds with typically developing (TD) versus protracted phonological development (PPD). A native speaker audio-recorded and transcribed single-word responses to a picture-naming task (110 words) that included eight words with WI rhotic clusters and two with WI singleton /r/. Accuracy was significantly higher in the TD groups and for the PPD groups, by age. Mismatch patterns varied: the PPD cohort had the most varied patterns although the younger children with PPD showed more /r/ deletion in clusters, and the TD groups and 5-year-olds with PPD more substitutions for /r/. Substitutions for rhotics included taps (most frequent; possibly an acceptable variant), voiced uvular and palatal fricatives, laterals, glides, other rhotics, stops and nasals. These results add to the growing database on Bulgarian phonological acquisition concerning accuracy and mismatches by group and age.     

Tap and trill clusters in typical and protracted phonological development: Conclusion

ABSTRACT

The current issue examined acquisition of challenging segments in complex contexts: Taps/trills in word-initial clusters, plus related targets (/l/-clusters and singleton rhotics and /l/). Data were from preschool children with typical versus protracted phonological development (PPD) in Iceland, Sweden (Germanic), Portugal, Spain/Chile (Romance), Bulgaria, Slovenia (Slavic), and Hungary (Finno-Ugric). Results showed developmental group and age effects. Clusters generally had lower accuracy than singletons, although not uniformly, and were more accurate in stressed syllables. The rhotics were less advanced than alveolar /l/ except in European Portuguese, where the lateral is velarized. In early development, the rhotic is often deleted, but in later, development substitutions for rhotics were more common, primarily non-nasal coronal sonorants, which match some of the place and manner features of the rhotic. Vowel epenthesis sometimes appeared in rhotic clusters. Children with PPD showed more varied mismatch patterns, including more than one mismatch pattern within a cluster. Implications for research and clinical practice are suggested.     

A Spanish pilot investigation for a crosslinguistic study in protracted phonological development

A crosslinguistic study is underway concerning children’s protracted phonological development (i.e. speech sound disorders). The current article reports pilot Spanish data for this study from two 4-year-old boys with protracted phonological development. The purposes of the pilot study were to: (1) develop and evaluate a word list for elicitation that could be used across Spanish dialects and that sufficiently sampled Spanish word lengths, stress patterns, word shapes and phonemes; and (2) to derive hypotheses for the larger study, based on patterns found in these children’s speech, and a review of the literature. The two speakers showed some developmental patterns reported for other languages (e.g. constraints on production of liquids and word-initial consonants in unstressed syllables) but also patterns that may reflect Spanish phonological inventories, allophony and frequencies. These data helped consolidate the Spanish word list for elicitation and led to questions for the ongoing study concerning word structure, multisyllabic words, liquids, fricatives and vowel sequences.     

Word-initial tap-trill clusters: Hungarian

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the developmental patterns of acquisition of word-initial (WI) /r/-clusters in children speaking Hungarian, typically developing (TD) or with protracted phonological development (PPD). Comparison data were also analysed for WI singleton /r/ and /l/. Participants were 191 children (aged 3;0–5;11) divided into three age groups (3, 4, 5 years), and further subdivided into TD and PPD subgroups on the basis of Whole Word Match scores (WWM). Acoustic analyses of perceptually accurate clusters were conducted to investigate epenthesis. Findings revealed that (1) both stop-/r/ clusters and singleton /r/ were mastered at age 5 by TD children, but not by children with PPD; (2) /l/ was mastered earlier than /r/; (3) mismatch types for clusters varied by age, with more C2 Deletion than C2 substitution at younger ages, and (4) schwa epenthesis durations were longer than, or equal to, those documented for adults.     

Phonological development of Danish-speaking children: A normative cross-sectional study

Detailed knowledge about speech development in children acquiring different languages provides important information from a clinical and a theoretical perspective: First, it provides a baseline for the evaluation of whether a child shows typical, delayed or deviant speech development. Further, differences in speech development across languages can help to understand how the phonological systems of ambient languages affects children’s speech acquisition. To date, little is known about Danish. It was suggested, however, that the acquisition process might be slower for Danish-speaking children due to the “blurry” sound structure of Danish. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to investigate typical speech development in 443 Danish-speaking children, i.e. types and age of occurrence of children’s phonological processes as well as on the acquisition of phones and clusters. The results showed that Danish-speaking children, in contrast to the expectations, were not delayed but advanced compared to children acquiring other languages.     

Word-initial /r/-clusters in Swedish speaking children with typical versus protracted phonological development

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated word-initial (WI) /r/-clusters in Central Swedish-speaking children with and without protracted phonological development (PPD). Data for WI singleton /r/ and singleton and cluster /l/ served as comparisons. Participants were twelve 4-year-olds with PPD and twelve age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) controls. Native speakers audio-recorded and transcribed 109 target single words using a Swedish phonology test with 12 WI C+/r/-clusters and three WI CC+/r/-clusters. The results showed significantly higher match scores for the TD children, a lower match proportion for the /r/ targets and for singletons compared with clusters, and differences in mismatch patterns between the groups. There were no matches for /r/-cluster targets in the PPD group, with all children except two in that group showing deletions for both /r/-cluster types. The differences in mismatch proportions and types between the PPD group and controls suggests new directions for future clinical practice.     

Word-initial rhotic clusters in typically developing children: European Portuguese

ABSTRACT

Rhotic clusters are complex structures segmentally and prosodically and are frequently one of the last structures acquired by Portuguese-speaking children. This paper describes cross-sectional data for word-initial (WI) rhotic tap clusters in typically developing 3–4- and 5-year-olds in Portugal. Additional information is provided on WI /l/ as a singleton and in clusters. A native speaker audio-recorded and transcribed single words in a story-telling task. Results for WI rhotic clusters show an age effect consistent with previous research on European Portuguese. Singleton /l/ was in advance of /l/-clusters as expected, but the tap clusters were in advance of the /l/-clusters, possibly reflecting the velarized characteristics of the lateral. The prosodic variables word stress and word length were relevant for the WI rhotic clusters: shorter words and stressed syllables showed higher accuracy. Finally, mismatches (‘errors’) mainly reflected negative structural constraints (deletion of C2 and epenthesis) rather than segmental constraints (substitutions).     

Acquisition of /s/ clusters in Croatian speaking children with phonological disorders

The authors studied the acquisition of nine #sC clusters in 30 Croatian-speaking phonologically disordered children, aged between 3;8–7;0 years, by analysing their renditions of target words elicited in response to visual stimuli presented on a computer screen. Results did not support the idea that a greater jump in sonority from C1 to C2 would translate into a greater accuracy of productions. The percentage of correct realizations was high for /s/+nasal combinations (mean 85%), and for approximants /j/ and /?/ (mean 77%) and stops (mean 73%), with significantly lower scores for liquids /l/ and /r/ (mean 47%). The difference between SSP-violating and SSP-following targets was not significant, and neither was the homorganicity of the target. The most frequent errors were substitution of the first consonant (i.e. /s/) while keeping the second one. These children are significantly different from the typically-developing group in two ways. First, retention of the first or the second consonant is not as frequent, and, second, /l/ is almost as difficult as /r/, as opposed to the typically-developing children who had no more difficulty with /l/ than with the other two approximants. Although cluster reduction is not the most common process in erroneous productions, the patterns emerged here generally agree with the findings from other languages.     

A phonological assessment test for child Greek

This article advances a clinical tool for assessing typical and atypical phonological development in children speaking standard Modern Greek or Hellenic (ISO 639.1, el). The proposed tool develops a comprehensive test that is archetypical of the standard idiom and of predominant dialectal variations and seeks to be readily available for logopedics and language researchers of child Greek anywhere. By utilising the constraint-based nonlinear theoretical framework, this Greek battery complements a larger study that utilises equivalent methodology in the evaluation of phonological acquisition of monolingual children with typical and protracted phonological development across several languages. As an example, the efficacy of the tool is tested by administering it to a monolingual Greek-speaking girl, aged 4;8, whose speech shows evidence of delay on different phonological levels when compared to known monolingual norms/data. The ultimate aim is a standardised test to help establish reliable quantitative norms/stages in child Greek development, as a benchmark for assessment and intervention of phonological delay and disorder.     

Word-initial rhotics in Slovenian 4-year-olds with typical versus protracted phonological development

ABSTRACT

This paper describes word-initial (WI) rhotic cluster development in Slovenian 4-year-olds. Data for /l/ and WI singleton /r/ serve as comparisons. Participants were 19 children with typical development (TD) and 13 with more protracted phonological development (PPD). A single-word list included 15 WI /r/-clusters, 9 /l/-clusters and 3 singleton /r/s and /l/s each. Results showed significantly higher match (accuracy) levels for rhotics in the TD group. Among rhotic clusters, TD children showed highest match levels for labial clusters, and the PPD group, for /dr/. Match levels did not differ significantly between singletons and clusters or targets in stressed versus unstressed syllables. Substitutions were more frequent than deletions, and children with PPD had more frequent and varied mismatch patterns; for the PPD group, [l] was the most frequent substitution for /r/ and for the TD group, other rhotics. The study provides additional criterion reference data on Slovenian phonological development.     

The relation between phonological and lexical development in French-speaking children

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relation between lexical and phonological variables in 40 French-speaking children, aged 2;5. Specifically, it examines the influence of phonetic complexity, phonological production, phonological memory and neighbourhood density (ND) on vocabulary size. Children were divided into four groups on the basis of their scores on the French version of the Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI): late1 (< 10%ile), late2 (15–25%ile), middle (40–60%ile) and precocious (> 90%ile). The children’s lexicons were coded in terms of phonetic complexity and ND (one-and two-syllable words), and their production capacities were determined from measuring percent consonants correct (PCC) and the number of syllable-initial (C_SI) and -final (C_SF) consonants in their phonetic inventories. The children also took part in a non-word repetition (NWR) task. Results indicated significant group differences in all four sets of variables. Children with larger vocabularies selected words with greater phonetic complexity and with lower ND values. They had superior PCC, C_SI and NWR scores compared to children with smaller vocabularies. Linear regression analyses indicated that 76% of variance in vocabulary size could be accounted for by ND in combination with phonetic complexity and C_SI. Our findings are consistent with previous studies which show that ND plays an important role in accounting for variance in vocabulary size. They also indicate that phonetic complexity and phonological production influence lexical acquisition.     

Multilingual English-Mandarin-Malay phonological error patterns: An initial cross-sectional study of 2 to 4 years old Malaysian Chinese children

Child multilingual phonological errors are under-explored. Cross-linguistic studies suggest monolingual children make phonological errors that are subject to effects of language universality and ambient language characteristics. Bilingual Chinese children were observed to use not only typical, but also atypical phonological errors compared to monolingual peers acquiring similar languages. Atypical errors are a result of specific bilingual pair effects. Close-language-relatedness (Cantonese-Mandarin) is claimed to be responsible for the nonexistence of atypical errors in both languages, whilst distant-language-relatedness (Cantonese-English) is observed to cause atypical errors in both languages. The present novel cross-sectional study investigated phonological acquisition in three typologically distant languages: English-Mandarin-Malay by 64 multilingual Chinese children aged 2½-4½. The present research aimed to explore if multilingual Chinese children exhibit phonological errors which commensurate to that of monolingual and bilingual Chinese children acquiring similar languages as described in the literature. The single-word phonological test results revealed that the multilinguals exhibited typical and atypical phonological patterns which largely commensurate with the monolinguals and bilinguals. Similar to bilingual children, the multilingual children showed more atypical errors in English than in Mandarin, demonstrating effects of individual language irrespective of potential interaction with additional languages. The present result did not fully support the link between closeness in typology of languages and the absence of atypical errors. Rare atypical errors were found in Mandarin and Malay, two typologically different languages, and both were also interacting with English, another typologically different language. The present findings provided useful preliminary multilingual speech norms for the use of speech therapists.     

Early phonological development: Creating an assessment test

This paper describes a new protocol for assessing the phonological systems of two-year-olds with typical development and older children with delays in vocabulary acquisition. The test (Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills (PEEPS), ) differs from currently available assessments in that age of acquisition, based on lexical norms from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories, served as the primary criterion for creating a word list. Phonetic and semantic properties of the words were also considered in selecting items for the test. Productions of words using the PEEPS protocol have been gathered from a group of children with typical development and another group with cleft lip and/or palate. By 24 months of age, the children with typical development produced more than 90% of the target words and the children with atypical development produced 73% of the words. Regarding administration, the time needed for administering the protocol decreased with age.     

Semantic and phonological retrieval in traumatic brain injury

Background: Identifying associations or links between encoded stimuli can influence whether those stimuli are successfully retrieved at a later time.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of semantic and phonological lexical targets on recall in individuals with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to identify if individuals with TBI form associations when recalling related information.

Methods & Procedures: Forty-seven individuals, 14 with TBI, completed the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word retrieval paradigm in which six digitally recorded word lists were presented auditorily. Three of the lists contained semantically related words and three contained phonologically related words.

Outcomes & Results: Non-brain-injured (NBI) participants recalled significantly more phonological and semantic stimuli than participants with TBI. Phonologically related stimuli resulted in increased intrusions for both TBI and NBI participants. For participants with TBI, age and time post injury were not significantly correlated with performance on the DRM paradigm, though the number of semantically related items recalled was moderately correlated with performance on standardised assessments. Though TBI participants recalled fewer words, they appeared to utilise recall strategies in a manner similar to NBI peers with intrusion data suggesting that both groups were forming associations between words.

Conclusions: Individuals with mild to moderate TBI successfully identify associations between encoded stimuli and used those associations when recalling target information.     

Acquisition of /s/-clusters in Hebrew-speaking children with phonological disorders

This study examines the production and reduction patterns of initial /s/ clusters by Hebrew-speaking children with phonological disorders. Data were collected from 30 children with phonological disorders between the ages of 3;5–5;2. The data were elicited by means of a picture-naming task combined with a sentence completion task. Target words consisted of initial clusters, including #sC and #CC clusters. Results revealed that the percentage of correct productions of /s/+approximant clusters were significantly lower than those of the correct productions of other /s/ clusters. The differences between /s/+approximant clusters and the other /s/ clusters also emerged in the reduction patterns, where clusters from the first group were reduced to C1 but clusters from the second group were reduced to C2. There were no differences in the correct productions between the productions of SSP-violating clusters and the SSP-following clusters.     

A Spanish pilot investigation for a crosslinguistic study in protracted phonological development

A crosslinguistic study is underway concerning children's protracted phonological development (i.e. speech sound disorders). The current article reports pilot Spanish data for this study from two 4-year-old boys with protracted phonological development. The purposes of the pilot study were to: (1) develop and evaluate a word list for elicitation that could be used across Spanish dialects and that sufficiently sampled Spanish word lengths, stress patterns, word shapes and phonemes; and (2) to derive hypotheses for the larger study, based on patterns found in these children's speech, and a review of the literature. The two speakers showed some developmental patterns reported for other languages (e.g. constraints on production of liquids and word-initial consonants in unstressed syllables) but also patterns that may reflect Spanish phonological inventories, allophony and frequencies. These data helped consolidate the Spanish word list for elicitation and led to questions for the ongoing study concerning word structure, multisyllabic words, liquids, fricatives and vowel sequences.     

Reading skills and phonological awareness acquisition in Down syndrome

Background Although reading abilities play a fundamental role in the acquisition of personal autonomy, up until now studies investigating these abilities in Down syndrome (DS) are aimed at defining educational or rehability acquisition. However, studies describing the relationship between reading and phonological awareness in individuals with DS by comparing them to typically developing children often report contradictory results. The aim of this study is to explore reading and phonological awareness skills in a group of participants with DS. Methods We administered reading and phonological processing ability tests to 17 DS individuals and to 17 reading‐age‐matched typically developing children. Results Concerning reading abilities, participants with DS were impaired on non‐word reading and on interpreting accuracy of non‐homographic homophones. Their passage comprehension was also limited. Comparable ability was reported in the two groups on irregular word reading and passage reading tasks. Regarding phonological awareness ability, individuals with DS showed lower performances on several tasks, such as rhyming, deletion and syllable segmentation. Conclusions People with DS show particular failure on non‐word reading, a task where correct decoding is only partially influenced by lexical access or semantic context. Correct non‐word reading mainly requires the use of the grapheme–phoneme conversion process. This process is based on the efficiency of phonological awareness abilities, which are partly impaired in people with DS. The rehabilitative implications of these findings are discussed.