Phonological Process In Children Essay

The present study aimed at identifying phonological processes in 2.6 years to 6 years typically developing Tamil speaking children. Thirty typically developing Tamil speaking children, age ranged from 2.6 years to 6 years participated in the present study. They were divided into 3 groups with 10 children in each group divided in one year interval. Totally 160 meaningful di-syllabic and tri-syllabic words in combination of 18 consonants, 10 vowels and two dipthongs in initial, medial and final positions were used to assess. Results revealed that thirty seven phonological processes were observed in children. The present study identified substitution processes was the highest occurrence than other processes. Although the processes and occurrence

However, vowel fronting, vowel lowering, vowel shortening, dipthongation and and monophthongation were observed in all the age groups compared to other process.
Among this four main categorization of processes highest number of occurrence was observed in substitution, SSP, vowel processes and assimilation in younger age group than older age group (Fig.1). Overall, this study found thirty seven processes to be exhibited in the Tamil speaking children in the age range of 2.6 years to 6 years. It was noticed that the processes are decreases as the age increases in children and frequency of occurrences also decreased in older age group. The declining use of phonological processes with increasing age has been reported in across languages including English (Grunwell, 1982; Hodson and Paden, 1983; Haelsig and Madison, 1986; Preisser et al., 1988; Roberts et al., 1990), Malayalam(Sameer, 1998; Anilsam,1999), Kannada (Sunil, 1998; Jayashree,19990. In this investigation, a phonological process was said to be persisting even if present in a single child. Additionally, a phonological process was defined as persisting if it occurred even once in the speech of the child. Lowe (1994)

Number of children demonstrating syllable structure processes in the three age groups
Syllable structure processes 2.6 – 3.6 years N= 10 3.6 – 4.6 years N=10 4.6 – 6 years N=10
ICD 5 (2-4) 2(1-2) 1(1)
MCD 6(2-6) 8(1-5) 6(1-3)
FCD 10(1-17) 7(1-5) 4(1-2)
ISD 4(1-3) 1(1) 1(1)
MSD 7(1-5) 5(1) 3(1)
FSD 2(3) 1(2) --
Metathesis ---- 1(1) ---
ICD-Initial consonant deletion, MCD- Medial consonant deletion, FCD- Final consonant deletion, ISD- Initial syllable deletion, MSD-Medial syllable deletion, FSD- Final syllable deletion
Table 5. Number of children demonstrating substitution processes in the three age groups
Substitution processes 2.6 – 3.6 years
N= 10 3.6 – 4.6 years
N=10 4.6 – 6 years
N=10
Bilabial backing 5(1-4) 2(1-2) 3(1)
Dental fronting 2(1-2) 1(1) ----
Dental backing 2(3) 6(3-8) 3(1)
Alveolar fronting 5(1-2) 7(1-2) 4(1-2)
Palatal fronting 5(2-17) 4(1-12) 4(1)
Palatal backing 1(1) --- ----
Velar fronting 4(1-13) --- ---
Retroflex fronting 7(1-3) 4(2-3) 1(1)
Retroflex backing 1(1) --- 1(1)
Liquid gliding 9(1-13) 4(1-5) 1(2)
Liquid stopping 10(1-9) 7(3-7) 7(1-6)
Stop liquiding 2(1-2) 4(1-5)