Phonology is a fundamental principle for language in every individual’s life. We are exposed to this principle before and after birth and throughout our lives. Phonology is fundamental to all spoken languages, each language having its own system. Regardless of the types of language spoken to a child, children have difficulties producing meaningful speech because they haven’t grown into their oral structure, in other words, their teeth.
Children are developing the ability to produce speech sounds through their ongoing process of practicing and learning how sounds are produced (Hoff, 2013, p. 116). Phonological processes enables them to obtain more words, and each child develops “systematic ways in which to alter the sounds of the target language so that they fit within the repertoire of sounds they can produce” (p. 124). Of the 100 utterances, Jacob used phonological processes in 16% of the speech sample when communicating.
Among those phonological processes, there was the process known as gliding, used 10 times, final constant deletion with one occurrence, cluster reduction used one time, the process known as fronting, used one time, and a process in which the child seems to replace the letter x with the letters and the letters with the letters ch. Gliding was evident when the letter r was being used, as seen in lines 8, 59, 78, 82, 84, 85, 91, and 100. In each of these utterances, the r was replaced with a w. For example, when “Please! I love roly polies”, becomes “Please!
I love wolly polly” (Utt. 85). When he said “The strawberry” becomes “The chawbewy” (Utt. 59) and “That means I played in the remote control”, becomes “That means I played with the wemote totol” (Utt. 8). Gliding was also evident when the word y was being used, as seen in line 43. For example, “Umm yellow”, becomes “Umm wello”. Gliding is common in children of Jacob’s age and it slowly eliminates when they reach the age of 5. There was one instance of final constant deletion and one instance of cluster reduction in utterance 19 when Jacob said “I don no”.
Fronting was evident when the letter k was replaced with the letter t. for example, when “It makes it go faster became “It mates it go faster” (Utt. 65). Jacob demonstrates another pattern to simplify adult speech which is in line 59 when he said “The strawberry” becomes “The chawbewy”. Jacobs substitutes the letter s which the letters ch when he is asked what flavor is the pick cupcake. While holding a roly poly in his hand, the roly poly rolls up and then unrolls and he said “Look! It exercising” becomes “Look! It esercising” (Utt. 94).
In this utterance, Jacob substitutes the letter x with the letter s. (Brenda Hernandez) Lexical Development A child’s environment plays an important role when it comes to their lexical development. Factors such as birth order, socioeconomic status, personality traits, and the level of education of the parents all have an impact in what words the child will learn and eventually utilize. Jacob is fortunate to have educated parents with a higher socioeconomic status, which allows Jacob to build his own vocabularies at a faster rate… and educated mothers talk to their children more (Hoff, 2013, p. 52). Out of 115 nouns, verbs, and adjectives, 54% of these were unique words. 37 nouns and 63 verbs were recorded. Nouns are mainly more common in children’s speech compared with verbs because in learning nouns children only need to learn the labels for meanings they already have. Children have an understanding of things based on their awareness of the physical world, as oppose in learning verbs children have to figure out how meaning is assembled by their language. These rational meanings are less available to children through nonlinguistic experiences (p. 42).
Although verbs aren’t as easy to understand as nouns, Jacob demonstrated to have a good concept of the use of verbs. For instance the verb “look” was used with a clear understanding of its role: “It looks so cute” (Utt. 87) and “Look! It esercising” (Utt. 96). The sentences aren’t complex but he understands the use of the verb. Jacob is using words and is learning about their meaning as well as leaning how they are used in relation to other words, his understanding of words and their role in sentences will provide him to widen his vocabulary and its usage. Brenda Hernandez) Morphology and Syntax Development The mean length of an utterance (MLU) denotes both the length and the complexity of a sentence. Jacob’s MLU is 2. 9, putting him in stage III. Jacob had a lot of short sentences of one morpheme each, which can be found such as in 1, 2, 3, 6, 13, 14, 20, 23, 30, 33, 36, 37, 39, 41, 44, , 46, 49, 51, 54, 56, 67, 79, 97, and in 98 when he said “why”.
His longest sentence, “Make it into a ball again ate Jaynia” (Utt. 96) a total of 8 morphemes, where all the words counted as one morphemes. Contrary to, “she’s doing cupcakes” (Utt. 2) is quite a short sentence of only three words but there is a total of six morphemes. This demonstrates that it doesn’t matter how many words a child uses or is able to use, but what is important is their ability to apply morphology in their language. Children of the ages between 31months through 34 months who are in the third stage of Brown’s MLU are children begin to add morphemes to their word combinations. Jacob, at 3 years old at the time of the recording, fits right into the age range for the stage, although through the utterances that were recorded he seem to be quite advanced.
Jacob knows how to properly use the morphemes when he communicates, for example, when he said, “That means I played on the wemoe totol” (Utt. 8). (Brenda Hernandez) Communicative Competence Competence in phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax provide children with a system for expressing meaning by providing sequences of sounds but that doesn’t mean that they have mastered language (Hoff, 2013, p. 205). Children need to use these accomplishments to communicate with others.
There are three elements of communicative competence that children develop through their path of learning to be efficient ommunicators, and these are known as pragmatics, discourse, and sociolinguistics. When “children learn the purpose to which language is put, for instance to request, to command, or to justify” it is known as pragmatic development (p. 205). There is more attention on children’s intentions whereas discourse is about managing longer stretches of talk, such as conversations and narratives (p. 205). The majority of Jacob’s responses were pragmatic; they were either to request, to command or to justify. For example, in lines 34 and 35, he demonstrates his ability to command: CHI: You do the blue.
AUN: I do the blue? CHI: Yeah cuz it’s fun. Even though the majority of Jacob’s responses were pragmatic, Jacob showed his knowledge of discourse as seen in the following sequence: CHI: Ate Jaynia, let’s go outside AUN: Yeah, you want to go? CHI: Yes, I want to play with a wolly polly AUN: Okay show me the roly poly! CHI: Yes! AUN: Where is the roly poly? CHI: In the grass! AUN: Where? CHI: Somewhere in the grass? (Utt. 76-82) Jacob is capable of starting a conversation as well as sustaining it. He demonstrates that he is able to take turns and answer questions. (Brenda Hernandez)