Consonant Deletion Research Articles

An Optimality Theory-Based Approach into the Phonotactic Constraints of English Spoken by Broadcasters in Nigeria

<p style="text-align:justify">One of the observations in the English spoken particularly in Nigeria is phonotactic constraints. The constraints pin down the generalization which guide the articulation of sequences of phonemes. The paper examines the patterns of English consonant clusters articulation of Nigerian broadcasters in the onset and coda positions against Received Pronunciation English. The study is conducted within the framework of Optimality Theory (henceforth OT). 20 radio and television broadcasters from 4 electronic media were selected as participants. Data were obtained by means of production test and OT was employed for the analysis. The findings revealed that the participants used epenthetic vowels to break-up consonants clusters in the onset and consonant deletion to simplify clusters in the coda. The subjects’ productions can be captured by ranking Markedness constraints higher than Faithfulness constraints.</p>

Pronunciation of Indonesian Language Consonant by Students with Autism in Bintang Harapan Special Needs School: A Psycholingustic Analysis

This study is entitled “Pronunciation of Indonesian Language Consonant by Students with Autism in Bintang Harapan Special Needs School: A Psycholinguistic Analysis”. The aim of this research is to describe the pronunciation of Indonesian Language Consonant by students with Autism in Bintang Harapan Special Needs School in Bandung, Indonesia. This research utilized qualitative data analysis with case study approach. The data was collected by observing students in Special Needs School of Bintang Harapan followed by recording and note-taking techniques as well as interviewing teachers and parents. Theories used in this research include psycholinguistic and phonological theories related to language acquisition. The research results show that there is alteration of consonants in [p], [t], [k], [g], [ñ], [ŋ], [l], [f], [v], and [z]; deletion of consonants [n], [ŋ], and [r]; and appearance of consonants [h] and [?]. However, the student has a good articulation compared to other students in the school. This was driven by family support, namely when he was a child, he was more often required to speak by his parents.

Is children’s speech development changing? Preliminary evidence from Australian English-speaking 3-year-olds

Purpose: Around 9% of children have difficulty acquiring intelligible speech despite typical sensory, neuro-motor and cognitive function. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) rely on descriptions of children’s speech errors to identify speech sound disorder (SSD) and determine intervention targets and goals. Existing normative data, however, need re-evaluation to reflect changes in populations and the language learning environment. This research evaluates whether developmental phonological patterns widely accepted as describing typical acquisition predict speech errors in a recent sample of pre-school children. Method: In 2015, 99 neurotypical children aged 3;0–3;8 years;months were assessed using the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP). Their performance was compared to studies describing speech development by children of the same age for phone repertoire and phonological patterns. Result: There were differences for both measures. Phone repertoire differences were marginal, but changes in phonological pattern use were unexpected. Suppression of three developmental phonological patterns (stopping of fricatives, final consonant deletion and voicing contrasts) was delayed compared to previous norms. Atypical consonant cluster reduction, sometimes considered a marker for disorder, was observed in 10% of children. Conclusion: There were qualitative differences in the speech development of the 2015 cohort of children compared to previous developmental norms. Valid and current normative data are necessary for the accurate identification of children needing intervention. The differences we found reinforce the need for regular updating of assessment tools, as well as greater understanding of how children’s language learning environments are changing and potentially influencing speech development.

Phonological Profile of Patients With Velopharyngeal Dysfunction and Palatal Anomalies.

This purpose of this study was to assess the frequency and types of phonological process errors in patients with velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) and the different types of palatal anomalies. A total of 808 nonsyndromic patients with VPD, who underwent follow-up at the Center for Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Anomalies, from 2000 to 2016 were included. Patients were stratified into four age groups and five subphenotypes of palatal anomalies: cleft lip and palate (CLP), cleft palate (CP), submucous cleft palate (SMCP), occult submucous cleft palate (OSMCP), and non-CP. Phonological processes were compared among groups. The 808 patients ranged in age from 3 to 29 years, and 439 (54.3%) were male. Overall, 262/808 patients (32.4%) had phonological process errors; 80 (59.7%) ages 3-4 years, 98 (40, 0%) ages 4.1-6 years, 48 (24.7%) 6.1-9 years, and 36 (15.3%) 9.1-29 years. Devoicing was the most prevalent phonological process error, found in 97 patients (12%), followed by cluster reduction in 82 (10.1%), fronting in 66 (8.2%), stopping in 45 (5.6%), final consonant deletion in 43 (5.3%), backing in 30 (3.7%), and syllable deletion and onset deletion in 13 (1.6%) patients. No differences were found in devoicing errors between palatal anomalies, even with increasing age. Phonological processes were found in 61/138 (44.20%) with CP, 46/118 (38.1%) with SMCP, 61/188 (32.4%) with non-CP, 70/268 (26.1%) with OSMCP, and 25/96 (26.2%) with CLP. Phonological process errors were most frequent with CP and least with OSMCP (p = .001). Phonological process errors in nonsyndromic VPD patients remained relatively high in all age groups up to adulthood, regardless of the type of palatal anomaly. Our findings regarding the phonological skills of patients with palatal anomalies can help clarify the etiology of speech and sound disorders in VPD patients, and contribute to general phonetic and phonological studies.

Lagos' Bus Stop Names and their Pronunciations by Danfo Bus Conductors

Danfo Buses are one of the main means of transportation in Lagos. For commuters to move from one location to another, it is highly essential that they know their bus stops and how the Danfo bus conductors pronounce them. This is because an inability to understand how these bus stops are pronounced will make it difficult for commuters to locate their destination. This paper aims to classify Lagos bus stop names based on their languages and sources of origin and demystify their pronunciation by Danfo bus conductors. Data was gathered through audio recordings of the speeches of the Danfo bus conductors. Data shows that bus stops in Lagos were named using both the local and English languages. Data also reveals that the names of these bus stops were derived from several ancient landmarks, including religious landmarks, commercial activities, agro-related landmarks, ancient edifices, and long-standing handiwork practices around these bus stops either now or in time past. The data further shows that the Danfo bus conductors employ various phonological processes such as vowel deletion, nasal deletion, vowel lengthening, consonant deletion, and word deletion in the pronunciation of bus stop names. The public is urged to take cognisance of these pronunciations in order not to miss their locations.

Coda cluster simplification of English loans in Chittagonian Bangla: An optimality theoretic account

The paper investigates the phenomenon of cluster simplification process at word-final level of English loans to Chittagonian Bangla through vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion. An Optimality eoretic (OT) analysis follows and exemplifies the cluster simplification process. It has been well represented that the emergence of constraint *CLUSTERCODA (Kager 1999) is in the driving seat in Chittagonian Bangla. MAX- C/V and CONTIGUITY are two more vital constraints beside two lower ranked faithful constraints MAX-IO and DENT-IO that rank in the vowel epenthetic and consonant deletion process. Further, ANCHOR-IO (R) works vital as the second lowest ranked constraint before DEP-IO. Deletion of ‘r’ in coda cluster is very distinctive in CB. Finally, it is apparently found that, the deletion of consonant /r/ results in a merger and thus influencing the lengthening of preceding monophthong to keep the syllable weight intact in CB.

Construction of auditory bombardment therapy program: a pilot study

Abstract Background Speech sound disorder is a communication disorder in which children have persistent difficulty saying words or sounds correctly. It refers to any difficulty or combination of difficulties with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds and speech segments. Aim of the Work to construct an Arabic auditory bombardment therapy program and measure its effectiveness in treatment of functional speech sound disorder. Subjects and Methods This study was applied on 60 participants divided into 2 groups (30 for each group) with age ranging from 3-5 years diagnosed with functional speech sound disorder with or without language disorders, attending at the Phoniatrics outpatient clinic in Ain Shams University Hospitals. The test for identification of phonological processes was applied on 60 patients with speech sound disorder selected to participate in this study. These were divided in to 2 groups (Group (1) received only the conventional therapy while group (2) received auditory bombardment in addition to the conventional therapy for 3 months) and the test was repeated again after therapy. Results Group (2) showed high significant difference (improvement) in consonant assimilation, voicing change, final consonant deletion, palatal fronting, gliding, lateralization and glottal replacement while group (1) showed high significant difference (improvement) in syllable deletion and partial cluster reduction. Conclusion The present study showed that application of auditory bombardment therapy program in addition to conventional therapy has high significant improvement than conventional therapy alone.

A phonological reanalysis of morphological segment deletion and de-affrication in Ik

Abstract Ik presents a widespread pattern of allomorphy characterised by morpheme-specific segment-zero alternations (deletions) and de-affrication. Part of the process is clearly phonological because it applies to every item in the language. Final vowels are devoiced into oblivion, though they are always recoverable in Non-Domain-Final context. Case allomorphy shows various item-specific patterns, some affixes overwrite the final-vowels of roots, others do not, and others yet exhibit consonant-zero alternations. Meanwhile, interestingly, there is (ostensibly) morphologically-sensitive consonant deletion that is fully complementary with what is clearly phonological vowel deletion. In fact, an entirely phonological analysis is possible if the consonant-zero alternations are modelled by floating consonants belonging to the exponents of certain morphemes. Therefore, the item/morpheme-specific aspect of the process is actually specific to the exponent of that morpheme. This locates the whole analysis in the phonology and provides a straightforward account of the complementarity of the two deletion processes. The formal analysis is very close to what has been proposed for French, with its floating consonants and its irregular hiatus-driven vowel deletion. The analysis will then be extended to the item-specific idiosyncratic process of de-affrication that is blocked, not by coincidence, precisely in morphologically overwriting environments. In the end, all the phenomena can be accounted for in a modular analysis, provided one gets the representations right.

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION DIVERSITY PRODUCED BY INDONESIAN COVER-SINGERS: A CASE STUDY ON THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL

This study focuses on the pronunciation changes of the Indonesian cover-singers on YouTube. It is qualitative research by using documentation technique. There were three subjects of this study namely RM with song “Memories”, AH with song “Thank You Next”, and HD with song “Comethru”. At the first singer’s pronunciation, there were 26 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, vowel shift, vowel coalescence, consonant neutralization, consonant insertion, and metathesis. At the second singer’s pronunciation, there were 17 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, vowel shift, consonant neutralization, consonant insertion, assimilation, and diphthongization. At the third singer’s pronunciation, there were 12 mispronounced words and she did consonant deletion, consonant neutralization, vowel shift, vowel coalescence, and consonant insertion. These pronunciation changes occur because of the distinction between the phonological system of English and Bahasa Indonesia , and the Indonesian cover-singers still rely on the word’s spelling rather than phonetic sound. Regardless of these two reasons, there are also several similarities in the phonological system between English and Bahasa Indonesia, but the Indonesian cover-singers still perform the pronunciation changes.

Syllable Structure and Word Stress in Central Kerala Konkani Variety: An OT Approach

This paper addresses the possible phonological patterns governing the syllable structures and word stress in Central Kerala Konkani. Unlike other northern dialects spoken in Kerala, Central Konkani variety does not allow any consonant clusters; instead it makes use of repair strategies such as vowel insertion and consonant deletion which result in resyllabification. The resulting words can be explained with the following constraints couched in Optimality Theory in the order: *CC >> NoCoda >> DEP-IO. Here we have observed that stress in Central Konkani is placed on the heaviest syllable. However, in cases where a word has two heavy syllables or only light syllables, stress is on the leftmost syllable. This is explained by the constraints ranked as WSP >> Edgemost (pk;L).

A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON ANALYSIS OF PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN TAMIL SPEAKING HEARING IMPAIRED CHILDREN WITH COCHLEAR IMPLANTS

Phonological Processes are simplification of sounds which occur among the children during the younger age and will gradually diminish giving an adult like speech form. The aim of the present study is to analyze the occurrence of phonological processes among hearing impaired children who underwent cochlear implant surgery during their younger age as an early intervention. The subjects included in the study were 10 children (5 male and 5 female) who were diagnosed with congenital total hearing impairment and underwent cochlear implant surgery and attending Auditory verbal therapy. The task given to the subjects in the present study is to repeat the words in Tamil Articulation Test followed by the Clinician. The words were recorded and further analyzed for the occurrence of phonological processes. The results show that a total of 26 phonological processes (both typical and atypical) occurred with a maximum occurrence of Depalatalization and minimally of Final Consonant Deletion. The results of the present study help in providing a better knowledge about the occurrence of phonological processes which helps the speech language pathologist in intervening hearing impaired children with cochlear implants and to improve their speech intelligibility.

Development of singleton consonants in French-speaking children with typical versus protracted phonological development: The influence of word length, word shape and stress

Purpose To provide preliminary reference data for singleton consonant development in children with typical development (TD) versus protracted phonological development (PPD) for Manitoba Canadian French, a language with an uncommon stress pattern (“iambic” or “right-headed”). Following a nonlinear perspective, singleton consonants were examined both as segments and in terms of the structure of words. Higher match levels for consonants were expected in shorter versus longer words and in stressed versus unstressed syllables. A larger effect was expected in children with PPD than those with TD. Method Participants included 20 TD children and 12 with PPD aged 2 to 4 years from Manitoba, Canada. Single words were digitally recorded by trained speech-language pathologists, transcribed by native French speakers and analysed with Phon 3.0. Result Friedman and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests revealed that children with PPD had significantly more mismatches than TD children, especially in contexts of unstressed syllables in multisyllabic words. The most common mismatch (“error”) patterns were consonant substitution, consonant deletion and syllable deletion. Conclusion Word length and stress were found to influence consonant development within French, similar to findings in languages with left-headed or trochaic stress. Clinically, the findings underscore the relevance of considering the child’s entire phonological system for identification of strengths and needs in assessment and intervention.

The Treatment of Final Coda Consonants in the Acquisition of Romanian Phonology

Abstract Final consonant deletion has been attested in the acquisition of English (Johnson–Reimers 2010), Chinese (Hua 2002), Dutch (Fikkert 1994), Hebrew (Adi-Bensaid 2015), Spanish (Goldstein–Citron 2001), and Indonesian (Ulaimah et al. 2016). Previous studies on the acquisition of Romanian phonology (Buja 2015a, b) indicated an extremely low incidence of this phenomenon among the Romanian-speaking children. A possible explanation for it could be the inconsistency in collecting the data (child diaries and longitudinal corpora). By means of an experimental study, i.e. a picture-naming task, this paper aims to prove whether Romanian children do drop final coda consonants. The words describing the pictures presented to the children have a C1(-2)VC1 structure (e.g. drum ‘road, way’, cap ‘head’, nas ‘nose’). The subjects in this small-scale research study were nine monolingual Romanian children aged between 2 and 4 years, who were recorded by their parents. Their spontaneous or imitated productions of the target words were transcribed by using IPA. The results of the analysis confirm the predictions made in my previous study (Buja 2015b) – namely that final consonant deletion, a very frequent phonological process in the acquisition of various other languages, is not characteristic of the acquisition of Romanian phonology.

An Optimality Analysis of the Phonological Processes in the Speech of Autistic Algerian Children: A Case Study

The current paper scrutinizes the phonological processes used by an autistic child, in Standard Arabic, via the use of a constraint-based framework of optimality theory. The data of the present study were collected through a picture-naming test. To ensure that the pictures are representative of all standard Arabic phonemes, the researcher designed a test containing 84 pictures representing three intra-word positions (initial, medial, and final). The results reveal that the autistic child grammar is characterized, mainly, with seven phonological processes: sibilant dentalization, de-emphasization, gliding, stopping, nasality spreading, final consonant deletion, and fronting. Autistic children's phonological system is stigmatized by unmarked forms. In terms of optimality theory, treating the phonological problems of autistic children requires demoting the highly ranked unmarked constraints and promoting the lowest-ranked faithfulness constraint.

Revisiting phonotactic repairs in Cantonese loanword phonology: it’s all about sC

Different factors have been claimed to affect the choice of repair on English words with ill-formed Cantonese phonotactics in Cantonese loanword phonology. The first half of this paper presents experimental evidence showing that variation is observed only when repairing different onset cluster types: there is vowel epenthesis for s + consonant (sC) clusters but deletion of the second consonant for other (OR) clusters. I propose that the Syllable Mapping Grammar (SMG), the syllable structure mapping component of the perception grammar, drives such variation: Cantonese speakers assign different phonological representations based on cluster well-formedness. When they perceive words with an sC cluster, their SMG assigns [s] as syllabic. A full OT grammar is also provided. I present evidence for the knowledge of cluster well-formedness from speakers of languages like Cantonese where complex onsets are absent. Potential sources of such knowledge and other alternatives to my proposal are also discussed.

Phonological Processes in A 18-Months Bilingual Toddler

<em>The toddler’s first words were unintelligible speech by adult. This study was conducted to investigate the language development undergone by a 18-months bilingual toddler. The study of language development had two perspectives in terms of clinical and linguistic perspective. This study was a linguistic perspective to find out the language development processes especially in phonological processes undergone by a 18-months bilingual toddler. This study employed descriptive case study as the method with observation and video recording as the data collection. The participant of this study was a 18-months Javanesse-Indonesian toddler. The data were collected for 30 days. The data were categorized and analyzed based on </em><em>Ingram's theory (1976)</em><em>. The result revealed that there were three categories of phonological processes undergone by 18-months Javanesse-Indonesian toddler such as substitution, assimilatory, and syllable structure processes. The syllable structure processes with initial consonant deletion is the most dominant types of phonological processes. The results are expected to enrich the study of language development especially in a 18-months Javanesse-Indonesian toddler in which the information will benefit for the practicing clinicians.</em>

Speech sound errors of Mandarin-speaking preschool children with co-occurring speech sound disorder and developmental language disorder

ABSTRACT This study examined the occurrence and types of speech sound errors in Mandarin-speaking children and compared those with co-occurring developmental language disorder (DLD) and speech sound disorders (SSDs) to those with SSD only and those with no DLD or SSD. The participants were 64 four-year-old Mandarin-speaking children, including 20 age-matched children with co-occurring SSD and LI (SSD + DLD), 20 with SSD only, and 24 with no DLD or SSD (typical development [TD]). Speech samples from a list of 20 pictures of common objects and animals were elicited in a picture-naming task. One speech-language therapist transcribed and analysed consonant production accuracy and coded speech errors into the types of substitution, omission, distortion, and addition and phonological processes into typical and atypical sound changes. The interrater reliability of consonant production analysis was checked by another experienced speech-language pathologist. Children with co-occurring SSD and DLD demonstrated the least accuracy of speech production among the three groups of children. Children with co-occurring SSD and DLD showed more frequent use of substitutions, omissions, typical sound changes (i.e. stopping of affricates, stopping of fricatives, deaspiration), and atypical sound changes (i.e. initial consonant deletion, fronting, affrication of stops) than children with SSD only, while no significant difference between the SSD and TD groups was observed in omission error types and atypical sound changes. These results suggest that the disorders in speech sound production in children with SSD and DLD may be associated with underlying phonological–linguistic processing.

Phonological awareness and sonority in Greek children: developmental data and clinical perspectives

ABSTRACT Phonological awareness is closely related to reading acquisition and it is often the focus of the therapy services provided by speech-language pathologists and special education teachers. In this study, we investigate whether sonority theory can account for the developmental patterns of phoneme awareness skills in Greek. To that end, 40 preschool and first grade children carried out an offline metaphonological task that involved the initial consonant deletion of two-consonant clusters. Overall, children’s performance was in line with the sonority sequencing principle (SSP); consonant clusters that display a maximal rise in sonority were easier to manipulate compared to clusters with minimal sonority difference or SSP-violating clusters. Affricates generated the highest number of errors, a finding that strengthens the singleton status of /ts/ and /dz/ in Greek. Increased error rates were also found for /ps/, /pç/, /ks/, a fact attributed to both to their spelling and sonority characteristics. Conclusively, it is claimed that the developmental error patterns reported in this study can be used to inform appraisal and treatment protocols of phonological awareness in Greek, by organizing metaphonological tasks based on the presumed level of difficulty of the items tested and/or treated.

Analysis of phonological criteria in Egyptian Arabic speaking children using cochlear implant

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study is to assess the most common segmental and supra-segmental phonological criteria of the Egyptian Arabic speaking children using CI. This may lead to; better understanding of speech progress and planning individualized therapy programs for these children. MethodsThis study included 43 children using cochlear implant (23 males and 20 females), from the clients of the phoniatric unit of ORL Department Zagazig University, at the period from September 2017 to April 2019. The age ranged between 4 to 10 years old. All children had assessments of their language and speech features (phonological patterns, segmental and supra-segmental) and speech intelligibility, then the results were collected and statistically analyzed. ResultsThe participants of the study exhibited many types of developmental patterns; e.g., Cluster reduction, final consonant deletions, assimilation and substitutions. There were also fewer incidences of non-developmental phonological patterns. The sequence of acquisition of segmental phonological development revealed the following sequence: Bilabial sounds acquired first (oral /b/ before nasal /m/), then lingu-alveolar, then fricatives, then velar and back sounds and lastly laterals and glides. All studied segmental, supra-segmental features and speech intelligibility were correlated with the CI usage period. ConclusionThe speech of the Egyptian CI children shows many developmental phonological patterns as well as non-developmental ones. The sequence of phonemic development revealed that anterior sounds precede posterior ones, oral sounds precede nasal ones and stops precede fricatives. Glides and laterals showed very late acquisition. All segmental and supra-segmental disturbances improved gradually with regular use of CI and attending speech therapy plans.

Percent Consonant Correct as an Outcome Measure for Cleft Speech in an Intervention Study

Background/Aims: Percent consonant correct (PCC) was originally described by Shriberg and Kwiatkowski [J Speech Hear Disord. 1982 Aug;47(3):256–70] as a severity metric for phonological speech disorders, and has been adapted and used in many studies on speech sound disorders. It is well-recognized that cleft speech is complex, consisting of several interacting parameters assessed simultaneously, with error sounds not in the listener’s own language. In speech outcome studies, narrow phonetic transcription and the reporting of intra- and inter-rater reliability are acknowledged as the gold standard. However, cleft speech brings special challenges to this task, as complex speech disorders are known to be associated with low transcriber agreement. Recent studies informed the decision to use PCC as the primary outcome measure in a cleft speech intervention study, given its common usage and familiarity. The aim was to specifically evaluate the intra- and inter-rater reliability of PCC in an intervention study, in contrast to other types of speech outcome studies. Methods: Two trained and experienced listeners analyzed 119 recordings, randomly selected from five data points before, during, and following intervention. The PCC score was separately calculated for words and sentences/phrases. Results: Using intraclass correlations (ICCs), Phase 1 results showed poor reliability for targets elicited for words (ICC = 0.07) and sentences/phrases (ICC = 0.42). Differences in classification of errors as glottal stops and consonant deletion accounted for this. Following further training, a second reliability study was undertaken showing improvement in the number of targets elicited in words (ICC = 0.85) and sentences/phrases (ICC = 0.94). There was very good inter-rater reliability for the PCC score on the word dataset (ICC = 0.9) and the sentence dataset (ICC = 0.88). Very good intra-rater reliability (ICC = 1.0) was found for the PCC score in both words and sentences/phrases for each listener. One listener consistently gave higher modified PCC scores. Conclusions: In cleft speech intervention studies, reliability of the number of targets elicited should be reported. Listeners need to distinguish between glottal articulation and consonant deletion, in order that the PCC score is meaningful. Attention should be paid to where listeners are reliable, but their pattern of scores consistently differs but in a consistent way. More research is needed on measuring the resolution of articulation difficulties in cleft intervention studies.