The Role of Distinctive Features in Articulation Errors

Abstract

Articulation errors of 1,077 children of various ages, etiologies, and sexes were taken from several standardized articulation tests. The Singh and Singh (1976) distinctive feature system was used to produce profiles for each subgroup for consonant phonemes in the initial, medial, and final word positions. Distinctive features were used with different degrees of importance causing hierarchial orders among the features. The hierarchy of features established in this study was consistent with those found in previous studies. It was more pronounced for the initial position than for the medial and final positions, and for the younger age groups as compared with the older groups. In addition, the feature hierarchy for the articulation-disordered group was more distinct than that for the language group. Females revealed a generally superior performance to males, but this superiority was in general not statistically significant. Findings are discussed as to their relevance in the overall application of a phonological theory to speech production strategies.