Language Development: Phonological Development

Babies can recognize their mother's voice from as early as few weeks old. It seems like they have a unique system that is designed to recognize speech sound. Furthermore, they can differentiate between certain speech sounds. A significant first milestone in phonetic development is the babbling stage (around the age of six months). This is the baby's way of practicing his control over that apparatus. Babbling is independent from the language. Deaf children for instance, babble the same way as hearing ones. As the baby grows older, the babbling increases in frequency and starts to sound more like words (around the age of twelve months). Although every child is an individual with different pace of mastering speech, there is a tendency to an order of which speech sounds are mastered:

• Vowels before consonants
• Stop sounds before any other consonant sounds (for example: 'p','t','b')

Place of articulation – labials, alveolar, velars, alveopalatals, and interdentals in that order by the age of 4. That means that there is some order to the development of the physical system in young children. 

 

Early phonetic processes 

 

As the children's ability to produce sound develops, their ability to perceive the phonetic contrast of their language develops. The better they get in mastering the sound, the more sensitive they become to the changes in those sounds in their language once they get exposed to it. They learn to isolate individual phenomes while speaking which also serves as the basis of reading.

Some processes that occur in early age:

• Syllable deletion – stressed syllables are emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. They are more likely to be retained in children's pronunciation than unstressed syllables (less emphasis on the sound) because they are more salient to children in an early language acquisition process. So children may say helikat instead of helicopter or fowe instead of telephone. That way, they don't pronounce the more emphasized sound in the word.
• Syllable simplification – another process that happens in order to simplify syllable structure, children delete certain sounds systematically. For example, children might say 'tap' instead of "stop" and completely drop the 's' sound in that word. That is a common process in children's speech development.
• Substitution – systematic replacement of one sound by an alternative, easier one to articulate (substitution process – stopping, fronting, gliding). It means that the young toddler may use sounds that are easier to produce instead of the proper sound in a word. We may see that the child replace the 'r' sound with 'l' or 'w', the 'n' with 'd' and so on.
• Assimilation – modification of segments of the word influenced by neighboring sounds, due to ease of articulation. In order for the young speaker to produce sounds easier, he or she may replace the sound in a specific word to a different one, which is somewhat similar. For example, the word "pig" may sound as "big" – 'p' and 'b' are close in their sound. (Lightbown, Spada, Ranta & Rand, 2006).

From shortly after birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around two months, the baby engages in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around four to six months, cooing turns into babbling, which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to say. In this 0–8 months range, the child is engaged in vocal play of vegetative sounds, laughing, and cooing.

 

Once the child hits the 8–12 month, range the child engages in canonical babbling, i.e. dada as well as variegated babbling. This jargon babbling with intonational contours the language being learned.

 

From 12–24 months, babies can recognize the correct pronunciation of familiar words. Babies also use phonological strategies to simplify word pronunciation. Some strategies include repeating the first consonant-vowel in a multisyllable word ('TV' → 'didi') or deleting unstressed syllables in a multisyllable word ('banana' → 'nana'). Within this first year, two word utterances and two syllable words emerge. This period is often called the holophrastic stage of development, because one word conveys as much meaning as an entire phrase. For instance, the simple word "milk" can imply that the child is requesting milk, noting spilled milk, sees a cat drinking milk, etc. One study found that children at this age were capable of comprehending 2-word sentences, producing 2–3 word sentences, and naming basic colors.

 

By 24–30 months awareness of rhyme emerges as well as rising intonation. One study concludes that children between the ages of 24–30 months typically can produce 3–4 word sentence, create a story when prompted by pictures, and at least 50% of their speech is intelligible.

 

By 36–60 months, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as pronunciation. At this age, children have a considerable experience with language and are able to form simple sentences that are 3 words in length. They use basic prepositions, pronouns, and plurals. They become immensely creative in their language use and learn to categorize items such as recognizing that a shoe is not a fruit. At this age, children also learn to ask questions and negate sentences to develop these questions. Over time, their syntax gets more and more unique and complex. A study reveals that at this age, a child's speech should be at least 75% intelligible. 

 

By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress patterns, which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.

 

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_development#Phonological_development)