An Analysis of the Phonological Patterns in Disyllabic Words Produced by Preschoolers in Anchor’s Nursery
CHAPTER ONE
Research Objectives
- To obtain how English Phonological Patterns is acquired in a typically developing child?
- To discuss the characteristics of the child’s speech in terms of numbers of syllables?
- To discuss the relationship of number of utterances to filler syllables per session?
- To discover the filler syllables decrease as the utterance lengths increase?
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Introduction:
To comprehensively explore the development of prosodic aspects in a child’s speech, it is essential to consider both suprasegmental and segmental elements. Suprasegmentals encompass features like pitch, quantity, duration, and loudness, contributing to aspects such as rhythm, fillers, intonation, syllable timing, and metric form. This study specifically focuses on the acquisition of stress patterns, utilizing data from a longitudinal case study on the speech and language development of a male child named Seth, spanning the period from 18 months to 23 months.
Phonological Patterns:
While research in phonological development has traditionally emphasized segmental aspects, attention to suprasegmentals is crucial. Suprasegmentals, which include pitch, loudness, and duration, provide additional information to the listener beyond phonemes, segments, syllables, words, and sentences. Rhythm, a key suprasegmental feature, is defined by Allen and Hawkins as a structural arrangement of units, organizing information in speech. The stressed syllable in adult English speech is marked by increased pitch, duration, loudness, and vowel quality changes. Pitch is identified as the most significant aspect of stress in adult speech.
The Acquisition of Phonological Patterns:
Snow’s (2018) study on children’s intonation production reveals that rising tones are imitated less accurately than falling tones. The study suggests a relationship between poor timing during rising tones and word lengthening. Another study by Snow (2017) investigates speech timing in children acquiring English, focusing on Voice Onset Time (VOT) and Final Syllable Vowel Lengthening (FSVL). Competing hypotheses about the order of acquisition were explored, with findings indicating that VOT and FSVL in children’s speech approach adult-like levels around the age of two. Stress, a critical element associated with prominence in syllables or words, is often linked with trochaic (strong-weak) patterns. The trochaic bias hypothesis posits that young children naturally prefer trochaic patterns. However, research by Vihman et al. (2018) challenges this hypothesis, suggesting that language-specific influences, rather than a universal bias, shape children’s preference for trochaic or iambic stress patterns.
In summary, the exploration of suprasegmental features, particularly stress patterns, in child language development is crucial for understanding the intricate interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors in shaping early speech.
Allen and Hawkins (2010) also claimed that the speech of English-speaking children is syllable-timed, and that duration is not used to differentiate between stressed and unstressed syllables. Pollock, Brammer, and Hageman (2013) examined duration contrast between stress and unstressed syllables in children between the ages of 2 and 4 years. It was found that the duration of unstressed syllables was reduced when produced by these children. It was also found that 2-year-olds do not differentiate stressed and unstressed syllables by fundamental frequency, but by duration and intensity. Therefore, duration may play a more important role in differentiating stressed and unstressed syllables than was suggested by Allen and Hawkins (2010).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODS
Research Design
– Adopt a survey research design to gather information on the phonological patterns of preschoolers.
– Use a cross-sectional approach to capture data from a diverse sample of preschoolers at a specific point in time.
Population and Sample:
– Population: All preschoolers attending selected preschools in a given region of Nigeria.
– Sample Size: Select a representative sample of 20 preschoolers from different preschools within the chosen region.
CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS
INTRODUCTION
Utterances were coded as one of the following categories: monosyllabic (M), filler monosyllabic (FM), disyllabic (D), filler disyllabic (FD), other (O), and filler other (FO). Chart 1 illustrates the syllable inventory overall, while Table 1 illustrates the tokens in each category for each month. In the charts and tables, 18_0 refers to 18 months and 0 weeks, while 18_2 refers to 18 months and 2 weeks. This format was used for all the recordings analyzed. Table 1.1 illustrates the total number of tokens in each syllable type (e.g., Monosyllabic, Disyllabic) from 18 to 23 months that were produced biweekly.
CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
The findings of this study suggested that 21 months was an important milestone in language development for this child. At 21 months, the number of filler syllables decreased and the duration of syllables showed a different pattern from 18 and 23 months. These data suggested that there may be a change in this child’s phonology at 21 months.
As mentioned previously, Seth produced mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic utterances. Paul (2001) states that disyllables typically emerge around 22-24 months. However, Seth produced disyllables at 18 months. In fact, 46 (28%) of his 164 utterances at 18_0 months were disyllabic (see Table 1.1 for syllable inventory). Since Seth produced disyllables at an earlier age than typically seen, it stands to reason that he would produce more disyllables at 22 and 23 months than typically seen, therefore, increasing the number of disyllables produced overall.
The syllable duration of 160 disyllables was calculated and coded as either Sw, wS, or ee (see Table 1.2-1.4). The findings of this study also suggested that regardless of trochaic, iambic, or evenly stressed syllables, the second syllable was longer in duration that the first. As Davis and MacNeilage (2010) found, the position of vowels has a strong effect on the phonetic production of the word. They found that their subject produced a longer vowel in monosyllables than had been reported in pre-speech babbling in their study (Davis & MacNeilage, 2019).
At 21 months, the number of filler syllables decreased and the duration of syllables showed a different pattern from 18 and 23 months. These data suggested that there may be a change in this child’s phonology at 21 months. In Davis, MacNeilage, Matyear, and Powell (2000), they found that even though the prosodic elements of the child’s speech seem to be controlled, that does not mean that those elements are established and under control. This seems to support one of Peters’ positions on fillers (i.e., Postion II). As discussed earlier, Position II states that fillers are phonological evidence of a language learner’s early awareness of some precursors of categories of language (e.g., inflection) (Peters, 2001). Evidence to support this position includes the fact that the child’s model is closely related with the development of an adult target (Peters, 2001). Most of Seth’s fillers later developed into functor words. For example, the target “pink and red” was produced by Seth as “pink n red”.
As the complexity and length of the utterance increased, the placement of the filler syllable seemed to change. For example, at 18 months, when monosyllables and disyllables were the main syllable type produced by Seth, the utterance length remained short and simple. The filler syllables were at the beginning of the utterance (e.g, “n teddy”). However, when Seth began to produce more multisyllablic words and the utterance length became longer and more complex, for example, at 23 months, the filler syllables began to appear in the middle of the utterance (e.g.,“pink n red”). For example, Seth said, “n crocodile” at about 19 months, while at 23 months he said, “talk on [□] phone”.
Position and age significantly affected the length of the syllable Seth produced.
In fact, significant differences were not found between stressed and unstressed syllables at this age. The second syllable was, in general, longer that the first syllable regardless of syllable type (i.e., trochaic, iambic, or evenly stressed). At 18 and 23 months the difference between the first and second syllable was significant but the difference was not significant at 21 months. Both the first and second syllables at 18 months were longer than the first and second syllables at 21 and 23 months. Snow (2014) suggested that children’s final syllable, the second syllable in disyllabic utterances, will be longer than the nonfinal syllable, or the first syllable in disyllable utterances. At 21 months, the difference between first and second syllables was not significant. Snow suggests that when the difference between final and nonfinal syllables becomes smaller, that children are beginning to reorganize their language (Snow, 2014). Snow also suggests that as children begin to acquire final syllable lengthening, they are also acquiring other aspects of language, such as syntax development. Therefore, phonology and syntax may be linked by prosodic features such as rhythm. The important fact that speech can have meaningful units that are longer than single words is beginning to be realized by children as their rhythm, syllable timing, and syntax begin to change as they reach the two-word stage (Snow, 2014).
Vihman et al. (2018) stated that, at about 23 months of age, their subjects, clearly had an emergence of knowledge of grammatical morphemes; however, they seemed to be produced as filler syllables. As Seth’s understanding of grammar and ability to control his language increased, the filler syllables began to disappear and the adult target was produced. This is consistent with Vihman et al. (2018). In their study, as the subjects’ knowledge of the grammatical morphemes increased, the subjects began to omit the filler syllables (Vihman et al. 2018).
Lahey (2012) (cited in Bloom, 2013) observed that her participant used adult-like phrases at 16 months and at 28 months. During the time between 16 and 28 months, Lahey observed a transitional period at about 21 months when the participant was acquiring syntax. During this time the stress contrasts produced were not as clear as the stress patterns in earlier and later months. The trochaic and iambic patterns were replaced by more evenly stressed patterns (Lahey, 2012).
Snow (2017) found that FSVL is only one of the suprasegmental components that control vowel and syllable length. In this study, age and stress are two other factors that affected syllable length. Since FSVL begins to emerge at about 21 months for English-speaking children (Snow, 2017) this is yet another factor that indicates that 21 months is an important milestone in language and prosodic development in children.
Snow (2017) suggested that in adult speech, stress and FSVL sometimes occur together. In that case, the final syllable would be almost 2 ½ times longer than the non-final syllable. In the case that the stress and the FSVL do not occur together, the final syllable is only 1/3 times longer than the nonfinal syllable (Snow, 2017). In any case, the final syllable (i.e., the second syllable in this study) was still longer than the nonfinal syllable (i.e., the first syllable in this study).
Vihman, et al. (2018) suggested that children are provided examples of different stress patterns through adult speech other than the trochaic pattern. For example, French-speaking children seem to have a bias for iambic stress patterns rather than trochaic stress patterns as in English. Nevertheless, they observed that children’s utterances, in both French and English, have longer second syllables than the first (Vihman, et al. 2018). The findings of this study are also consistent with Vihman, et al. (2018).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, 21 months was an important milestone in language development for this child. During this period of 18 to 23 months, Seth produced mostly Monosyllabic and Disyllabic utterances. Research from this stud conclude that the filler syllables provided scaffolding for Seth to develop language during the 18-23 month period.
As Seth began to polish the syntactic elements of his speech, the fillers began to disappear. This shows that as he began to comprehend more of the adult model, less of the utterance had to be filtered out. The rhythmic elements of the adult model provided by his father gave Seth a standard to follow. As Seth’s vocabulary grew, he was able to fill in the rhythmic elements with words that had meaning to Seth, instead of fillers to simply be a place holder.
As the utterances Seth produced became more complex, the position of the filler syllables changed in the utterance. For example, the fillers shifted from the beginning of the utterance to the middle of the utterance as the utterance length increased. It was found that position and age significantly affected the length of the syllable Seth produced at 18, 21, and 23 months regardless of syllable type (i.e., trochaic, iambic, or evenly stressed).
These findings suggest that 21 months was a milestone marker for Seth. The researcher investigated the development of Phonological Patterns in English and its relationship to Disyllabic Words Produced by Preschoolers with the acquisition of stress patterns.
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