Consonant acquisition and phonological processes in typically developing Tamil speaking children

Abstract

The primary goal of the present study was to determine the age of consonant acquisition as well as the type and frequency of occurrence of phonological processes in Tamil speaking children. 450 Tamil speaking children between 2 and 4 to 11 years sub grouped in 6 months age interval participated in this study Word and Sentence list comprising of 43 words and 39 sentences in Tamil were developed The target items analysed 24 consonants in Tamil in all possible contexts Speech samples were collected from children using spontaneous picture naming task single word and sentence repetition task Other objectives of these studies were to verify if the consonant acquisition and frequency of occurrence of the processes vary between the age groups and tasks Children were instructed to spontaneously name 43 pictures shown to them and repeat 39 sentences after the investigator The speech samples collected were audio recorded and were phonetically transcribed Error analysis was carried out to determine the objectives by employing appropriate statistical measures Results revealed that all Tamil consonants were acquired by 3 to 5 years except flap trill and palatal lateral in spontaneous single word naming task However all the consonants were acquired by 4 to 5 years in sentence repetition task Significant difference was observed in correct production of all consonant categories between younger and older children Correct production of stops affricates flap trill and laterals were significantly different between the word naming and sentence repetition tasks Type of occurrence of phonological process revealed occurrence of 15 different types of phonological processes such as Initial Consonant Deletion Medial Syllable Deletion Cluster Reduction Backing Fronting Stopping of Fricatives Stopping of Liquids Affrication Deaf frication Gliding of Liquids Lateralization Vocalization Nasal assimilation Velar assimilation Labial assimilation They were further grouped under 3 major categories namely Syllable structure substitution and assimilatory processes Most of the processes were suppressed by 3 years and more commonly occurring processes beyond 3 years were Cluster reduction and Stopping of liquids Significant difference was noted in frequency of occurrence of processes between younger and older children Frequency of occurrence of syllable structure process was significantly different between word naming and sentence repetition tasks findings of the study revealed Persistence of phonological process such as cluster reduction and stopping of liquids even after 3 years as reported in the current study has been observed in the children speaking English Tamil and other Indian languages The reduction in frequency of occurrence of Initial Consonant Deletion ICD and Medial Syllable Deletion MSD after 3 years is noted in other studies carried out in Tamil speaking children by Nisthar 2005 and Barathy 2001Rare occurrence of assimilatory processes beyond 3 years is in concurrence with earlier studies done in English and Tamil speaking children Phonological process such as final consonant deletion which is often reported in children speaking English is not applicable to Tamil language as most Tamil consonants do not terminate a wor. In other hand occurrence of initial consonant deletio, a process which has not been reported in English and other western language speaking children has been reported in studies carried out in children speaking Tami. This highlights the fact that children may exhibit a specific developmental error pattern based on the phonological structure of the language newline