Phonological Development in Urdu-Speaking Children: A Systematic Review

Background Speech and language researchers study phonological acquisition and evaluate the errors that children make to understand this complex process. This information provides clinicians with a scientific reference for better assessment and intervention services to children with articulation/phonological disorders. Urdu is a language spoken by more than 200 million speakers worldwide. However, research on Urdu phonological development is in its infancy. Purpose This systematic review aimed to identify relevant studies and provide a comprehensive review of which aspects of Urdu phonological development have been targeted, along with the reported findings. Method Five phases of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses guidelines were followed. All retrieved studies published between January 1980 and March 2020 and focusing on Urdu speech sound acquisition and/or phonological processes in typically developing native Urdu speakers aged up to 8 years were included in the review. The final search was conducted on May 4, 2020. Results A total of 873 records were identified from five databases and a manual search. Nine studies fulfilling the inclusion criteria were included in the final review. All studies were published in the English language, five of which were unpublished master's theses and four were peer-reviewed journal articles. Four of these studies focused on consonant acquisition, whereas five explored phonological processes. No study focused on the acquisition of Urdu vowels, diphthongs, or consonant clusters. These shortlisted studies were reviewed in detail to determine participants' demographic characteristics, focused areas of phonological acquisition, data elicitation methods and contexts, transcription systems, and major findings. Conclusion This study provides a comprehensive review of the available literature on Urdu phonological development and highlights areas for future research.

Probabilistic Feature Attention as an Alternative to Variables in Phonotactic Learning

Since Halle (1962), explicit algebraic variables (often called alpha notation) have been commonplace in phonological theory. However, Hayes and Wilson (2008) proposed a variable-free model of phonotactic learning, sparking a debate about whether such algebraic representations are necessary to capture human phonological acquisition. While past experimental work has found evidence that suggested a need for variables in models of phonology (Berent et al. 2012, Moreton 2012, Gallagher 2013), this paper presents a novel mechanism, Probabilistic Feature Attention (PFA), that allows a variable-free model of phonotactics to predict a number of these phenomena. Additionally, experimental results involving phonological generalization that cannot be explained by variables are captured by this novel approach. These results cast doubt on whether variables are necessary to capture human-like phonotactic learning and provide a useful alternative to such representations.

Variation in quality of maternal input and development of coda stops in English-speaking children in Singapore

This study examines the effects of input quality on early phonological acquisition by investigating whether interadult variation in specific phonetic properties in the input is reflected in the production of their children. We analysed the English coda stop release patterns in the spontaneous speech of fourteen mothers and compared them with the spontaneous production of their preschool children. The analysis revealed a very strong positive input–production relationship; mothers who released coda stops to a lesser degree also had children who tended to not release their stops, and the same was true for mothers who released their stops to a higher degree. The findings suggest that young children are sensitive to acoustic properties that are subphonemic, and these properties are also reflected in their production, showing the importance of considering input quality when investigating child production.

Consonant Repertoire of a Prelinguistically Deaf Child with Late-Mapping Cochlear Implants

Objective: The present case study aims to report on the consonant repertoire during the pre-linguistic and first linguistic stage of a Greek-Cypriot speaking child bilaterally implanted with multichannel Cochlear Implants (CIs). Background: Children with Hearing Loss (HL) produce canonical babble later, and consonantal inventories of HL children are smaller. However, the consonant repertoire of CI Greek-speaking children has not been examined thus far and research on types of consonantal errors during phonological acquisition is scant. Clinical Case: A pre-linguistically deaf child (CY, 7;0 years old) received the first CI at 7 months of age, but the external part of the device was fitted at 2;7 years. An investigation of the child’s speech at 7;0 years was conducted through auditory analysis. The child’s canonical utterances were transcribed in IPA and his consonants were classified into subcategories, depending on articulation place, articulation manner and resonance. Regarding place, alveolar consonants were the main category produced. As regards manner, closed consonants was the first category to appear, while in terms of voicing, voiceless consonants were recorded more often than voiced ones. The analysis also showed that consonants /t/, /s/ and /p/ were dominant in the child’s speech and revealed several phonological processes. Conclusion: The present case holds special interest as the child’s phonological system is still between the pre-linguistic/first linguistic stages due to the delayed CI mapping. The results agree in part with several studies in the literature, while specific phonological error patterns observed, remain to be verified in other CI Greek-speaking children.

Learning Nonlocal Phonotactics in a Strictly Piecewise Probabilistic Phonotactic Model

Phonotactic learning is a crucial aspect of phonological acquisition and has figured significantly in computational research in phonology (Prince & Tesar 2004). However, one persistent challenge for this line of research is inducing non-local co-occurrence patterns (Hayes & Wilson 2008). The current study develops a probabilistic phonotactic model based on the Strictly Piecewise class of subregular languages (Heinz 2010). The model successfully learns both segmental and featural representations, and correctly predicts the acceptabilities of the nonce forms in Quechua (Gouskova & Gallagher 2020).

The influence of orthography in second language phonological acquisition

We provide an exhaustive review of studies in the relatively new domain of research on the influence of orthography on second language (L2) phonological acquisition. While language teachers have long recognized the importance of written input—in addition to spoken input—on learners’ development, until this century there was very little systematic research investigating the relationship between orthography and L2 phonological acquisition. Here, we review studies of the influence of written input on L2 phonological awareness, phoneme perception, the acquisition of phonological processes and syllable structure, and the pronunciation and recognition of words. We elaborate the variables that appear to moderate written input effects: (1) whether or not a novel phonological contrast is systematically represented by the L2 writing system (systematicity); (2) whether some or all of the L2 graphemes are familiar to learners from the L1 (familiarity); (3) for familiar graphemes, whether the native language (L1) and the L2 employ the same grapheme-phoneme correspondences (congruence); and (4) the ability of learners to perceive an auditory contrast that is systematically represented in writing (perceptibility). We conclude by calling for future research on the pedagogical implications of this body of work, which has thus far received very little attention by researchers.

PENGARUH PERCAKAPAN NEGATIF KELUARGA TERHADAP PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA ANAK USIA 3—4 TAHUN

The effect of negative conversation occurs intensively in children aged 3-4 years because it is a period of imitation. This period is one of the stages of socialization that a child gets within his family's scope. This study aims to comprehensively examine the negative conversations that affect language acquisition, especially phonological acquisition, mainly acquiring vowels that occur in SM and NS. The research method used is a qualitative descriptive method. The study results revealed that negative conversation significantly affected children's language acquisition and its characteristics. The concrete reality at this stage, especially when the family says anything, then gradually the child brain area will process it. The child will repeat it. This phenomenon occurs repeatedly, and then it is not imagined that he will speak these words spontaneously. A child tends to say it without understanding the meaning. Still, it will affect his character if the negative sentences internalized to his thought. Adopting this negative conversation tends to have unideal characteristics because a child does not imitate his negative words. Still, he tries to understand the meaning uttered by the person closest to him. In this case, the study results reveal that negative conversations significantly affect children's language acquisition and affect their characteristics. The conclusion is that language acquisition through an unfavourable exchange is obtained by internal (family) factors and external factors.