Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2020, Blaðsíða 40

Þóra Másdóttir. 2019. Hljóðþróun íslenskra barna á aldrinum tveggja til átta ára. Netla —
Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. ⟨https://doi.org/10.24270/netla.2019.11⟩.
summary
‘Phonological processes in the speech of Icelandic children aged 2–8 years’
Keywords: phonological development, phonological process analysis, articulation, speech
sound disorder
When children have difficulties with articulation of speech sounds past an expected age,
they are diagnosed with speech sound disorders. The term includes both articulation disorder
and phonological disorder/impairment. Assessment of a speech sound disorder is most often
made by administering an articulation/phonological test. The results indicate whether the
child’s mismatches are age-appropriate or whether the child should be referred to speech
therapy. There are several ways to analyse a speech sound disorder. One approach is phono-
logical process analysis. Phonological processes are systematic sound changes and simplifica-
tions that affect classes of phonemes based on place, manner, and laryngeal features, i.e.,
not just individual phonemes. This type of analysis identifies context beyond the individ-
ual phoneme by taking into account word position and syllable structure. Speech and lan-
guage therapists/pathologists use phonological process analysis to find error patterns or
speech simplifications in the child’s phonological system in order to determine the need
for therapy and to assist with establishing goals for treatment.
The main objective of this study was to analyse phonological processes in the speech
of Icelandic children between two and eight years of age. The processes were analysed
using data from a standardised sample of an Icelandic articulation test, Málhljóðapróf ÞM.
Phonological processes were analysed in the speech of 433 Icelandic children aged 2;6–
7;11 years. A part of the analysis had already taken place before the study. A phonological
process was considered to be active when it appeared at least three times in a child’s
speech. An exception was made in the case of four processes, for which the test provided
limited opportunities to apply.
The results showed that the number of active processes decreased considerably with
age. Older children exhibited a more limited range of phonological processes than did the
younger children. The frequency of occurrence was also reduced in most instances. Some
processes increased from one age group to the next, which was concluded to be due to
changes in the children’s phonological system as their speech developed. As expected, there
was a statistically significant difference detected in the mean number of active phonologi-
cal processes between the oldest and the youngest age groups in the study. In fact, there
was a significant difference between most age groups, except groups adjacent in age. A
ceiling effect was detected in the oldest age groups. This was to be expected as the speech
of children becomes more adult-like as children grow older and their phonological system
develops.
The most common phonological processes in the speech of children of all age groups
were substitutions. In fact, certain substitutions are still fairly common among the oldest
age group (7;6–7;11), in particular // → [n] in word-initial position as well as /r/ → [ð]
Anna Lísa Benediktsdóttir o.fl.40