CLA Phonology Concepts Revision

Make sure your notes include references to all of these concepts so that your revision will be easy-peasy:

Key concepts (AO2)

-       Babies live in an auditory world - remember to think about the sounds in words and not the written forms of the words

-       Babies predisposed to discern sounds – favour mother’s voice from few hours after birth and recognise own language. Mehler

-       Phonemic contraction occurs by 10 months – sounds reduced to those of babies’ own language

-       Proto-words  and babbling follow CVCV pattern favoured by English (cooing is just vowels - easier)

-       ‘Mistakes’ that children make: Substitution, deletion, addition, assimilation, metathesis, consonant cluster reduction, weak syllable deletion, final consonant deletion, reduplication 

-       Fis phenomenon (comprehension precedes production) 

-       Cruttenden 1974 football results (intonation takes long time to reach adult understanding)

-       Stages - Phonological acquisition very varied between different children but general patterns: initial consonants easier than final ones, plosive sounds easier (p, b, k etc); David Olmstead – age of 4, some sounds still difficult: l (middle of words), th, ch, dg (judge); Grunwell stages; Phonological development generally complete by age 6 – 7.