Communication Disorders

Clasifying speech sounds by how they are produced

• Voice Parameter
  • Closed vocal folds - glottal stop 
  • Open vocal folds - voiceless sounds 
  • Vibrating vocal folds - voiced sounds 
• Place Parameter 
  • When the sound is articulated 
  • The active lower articulators move towards the passive upper articulators 
  • The tongue: most powerful articulator; tip, blade, front, back 
  • Nasal sounds: lower velum; air escapes through nose, M + N
  • Oral sounds: raised velum; air escapes through mouth, P + T + S
• Manner Parameter 
  • The way in which air is released in the production of consonants
  • Plosive
    • Production involves a complete closure at some point in the vocal tract: air pressure builds up behind this closure 
    • Sound is then released suddenly resulting in a small explosion of air 

Manner Parameter 

• Fricative 
  • Production involves two articulators being brought so closely together that the passage of the air stream through them creates turbulence and audible friction 
• Affricate 
  • Production involes a complete closure at some point in the mouth with a build up of pressure behind the closure but the release is slower than that associated with a plosive which produces audible friction 
  • A plosive with a fricative release
• Glide
  • Production involves bringing two articulators less closely together than in the case for fricatives thereby creating less audible firction, resulting in a vowel like quality 

• Differential Rate of Phonological Acquisition 
  • 1.6 years : P B M H N W 
  • 2 years : K G D T N 
  • 2.6 years : F 
  • 3 years : R L S 
  • 3.6 years : TH
  • 4 years : Z DGE 
  • 4.6 years : V 
• Which factors affect the differential rate of acquisition? 
  • Visibility
    • Relationships with infants is physically close
  • Complexity 
  • Frequency 
    • Sounds you hear first 
• Gradual nature of phonological development 
  • Children gradually build up an inventory of speech sounds 
  • Errors are not random but governed by a number of phonological processes 

• Substitution Errors: articulating a sound the child can rather than the adult target 
  • Voice Parameter
    • Voicing of voiceless consonants 
    • Devoicing of voiced consonants 
  • Place Parameter
    • Fronting: articulating the sound further forward in the mouth 
  • Manner Parameter 
    • Stopping: forming a complete closure in the vocal tract rather than a gradual release 
    • Fricative to plosive 
• Deletion Errors: omission of one or more sounds  
  • Single consonant deletion 
  • Consonant cluster reduction 
  • Syllable deletion 
• Epenthesis Errors: addition of one or more spurious sounds 
  • Blue to belue 

• Internal Principle 
  • Sound is replaced by one internal to the language 
• Proximity Principle 
  • Sound is replaced by one that is close to the target 
• Simple Principle 
  • Change one feature 
• Rarely see a feature where all three principles are changes 

• Morphemes
  • Smallest unit of meaning 
  • Words that stand alone are free morphemes 
  • Bound morphemes must be attached to a word 
  • Acquisition of bound morphemes takes time and is gradual

• Grammatical morphemes and their rate of acquisition

1. Present progressive - ing

2. Plural - s

Plural irregular (feet, mice)

Past irregular (went, came)

3. Possessive - s

5. Past regular - ed

4. Present regular - s

• Rate of Acquisition 
  • Case by case learning 
  • Overuse of general rule
  • Mastery of exceptions to the general rule 
• Determining factors
  • Frequency 
  • Syllable structure 
  • Relationship with form and meaning 
  • NO exceptions in use 
  • Allomorphic variation 
  • Semantic function 

Are those morphemes last acquired the most vulnerable in language disorders? 

• Stage One 
  • 12-18 months: for several months, children speak in single word utterances 
  • Want, bye bye, more, daddy, teddy, no, hi 
• Stage Two 
  • 18-24 months: children begin to put two words together 
  • Telegraphic speech: this reflects the idea that children initially use a reduced/imperfect form of adult sentence patterns - like the old telegrams 
  • Children use content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions)
  • Omit function words (determiners, auxilliaries, complementizers) and bound morphemes 
    • Less meaning 
    • Unstressed morphemes 
    • Underlying knowledge does not include the grammatical categories that govern the use of those omitted forms
  • Affirimative, declarative sentences
• Stage Three 
  • 24+ months - multi word utterances 
  • 'I can't do it' 'Me dont know' 

• Development of Communicative Competence 
  • Learning to use language 
  • Children need pragmatic, discourse and sociolinguistic understanding 
  • Babies discover that communication is possible by observing the effects of their initially non communicative noises on the listener 
  • Pre school children are egocentric 
  • Appropriate language use takes time, they need to learn cultural norms such as politness, request forms, turn taking, narrative structure
• Pragmatic Phrases
  • Perlocutionary
    • Having effects: children have effect on their listener (0-9 months)
  • Illocutionary 
    • Having intentions: children realise that other people can be helpful in satisfying ones goals (10 months)
  • Locutionary 
    • Using language to refer (1 year +)

• What is a slip of the tongue? 
  • A localised difficulty a speaker has in forming the articulatory program to guide the articulatory muscles in the production of sounds 
  • An involuntary deviation in performance from the speakers current phonological, grammatical or lexical intention 
• The Laws
  • Each speech error results in a sequence of sounds that's permitted in the language being spoken - bright to blight 
  • Segmental errors: the beggining of a syllable changes with a beginning, similarly for middles and ends - car park to par cark 
  • Sounds shift between lexical categories, words exchange with other members of the same class - double bed to bouble bed 

• Selection Errors 
  • Wrong item is chosen 
  • Word substitutions 
    • Its hot in here please turn up the radiator 
    • Results in self correction 
    • Not random, come from same grammatical class and are typically semantically and/or phonologically related 
  • Malopropism 
    • Im simply ravishing (said when hungry)
    • Ridiculous misuse of word, trying to better style 
  • Environmental contamination 
    • Can you answer the telly for me? 
    • Tiredness 
  • Blend 
    • Frowl (frown and scowl)
    • Overlaps 
    • Dont make decision quick enough 

• Programming Errors 
  • Correct choice of words but program set up for utterance has been faultily executed 
  • Substitutions 
  • Anticipation 
    • A segment produced reflects the influence of one occuring later 
    • A leading list (reading list) 
  • Perseveration 
    • A segment produced reflects the influence of one occuring earlier 
    • A phonological fool (phonological rule)
  • Transposition 
    • Two units interchange 
    • Cat and hoat (coat and hat) 

• Phrases 
  • The grand canyon went to my sister 
• Words 
  • A gas of tank 
• Syllables 
  • Schactwell and Stockter (Stockwell and Schacter)
• Phonetic Segment 
  • Sea weeded the garden (Sue weeded the garden)
• Phonetic Features 
  • Pig and vat (Big and fat)

Similar errors occur in sign language 

Communication Chain in more detail 

• Garrett 1976
• Meaning Selection 
  • Decide on meaning the present constituent should have 
• Selection of Syntactic Outline 
  • Build a syntactic outline of the constituent, specify a succession of word slots and indicate which slots get primary, secondary and zero stress, rooting grammar
• Content Word Selection 
  • Select nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to fit into the appropriate slots
• Affix and Function Word Formation 
  • With the content words decided, next step is to spell out the phonological shape of the function words (articles, conjunctions and prepositions), prefixes and suffixes