Phonological Processes Which Characterize Unintelligible and Intelligible Speech in Early Childhood

Abstract

Phological systems of 60 "essentially unintelligible" children between the ages of three and eight years and 60 normally-developing "intelligible" four-year-olds were analyzed and compared. All of the unintelligible children evidenced liquid deviations, cluster reduction, stridency deletion, stopping, and assimilation. Liquid deviations were demonstrated by some of the intelligible children, however, the majority produced liquids approximately, and few demonstrated any examples of cluster reduction, stridency deletion, or stopping. Most of the unintelligible children used one or more of the following processes: final consonant deletion; fronting of velars; backing; syllable reduction; prevocalic voicing; glottal replacement. The intelligible four-year-olds rarely utilized any of these latter processes, but postvocalic devoicing, substitutions of /f v s z/ for /θ/ or /ð/, and vowelization of postvocalic or syllabic /l/ were common in their speech samples.