Phonological Acquisition

Phonological Acquisition

A.    English Phonological Acquisition

The child’s learning how to pronounce the words of the the native language. Children learn speech sounds, consonant and vowel such as fish, butter, elephant.

B.     Indonesian Phonological Acquisition

General stages of a Child Development of Language Ability, Namely:

1.      Reflexsive Vocalization
At the age of 0-3 weeks, the sound of crying babies is still a reflex. So, a baby crying is not because she wants to cry but it is done without knowing.

2.      Babling

At the age of more than 3 weeks, when baby is hungry or uncomfortable feeling he will issue a sound of crying. Unlike previously, the cries have been issued can be distinguished according to the wishes or feelings of the baby.

3.      Lalling
At age 3 weeks to 2 months of start sounds but not clear. Baby begins to hear at the age of 2 to 6 months so that he began to utter the word with a syllable repetition, such as: "ba .... Ba ..., ma .. ma ...."

4.      Echolalia
At this stage, namely when the baby is at the age of 10 months she began to imitate the sounds that the hearing of the environment, and he will also use facial expression or hand gesture when they want to ask something.

5.      True Speech
Babies begin to speak properly. At that time he was around 18 months or so-called toddlers. However, the pronunciation is not perfect like an adult.

1.      Stages of Language Development in Children According to some experts
A. Lundsteen, divide language development in 3 stages:
1. Prelinguistic stage
- At the age of 0-3 months, the sound in and derived from the throat.
- At the age of 3-12 months, many wearing lip and palate, for example, ma, da, ba.
2. Phase protolinguitik
- At age 12 months-2 years, children already understand and demonstrate the tools of the body. He began to speak a few words (vocabulary can reach 200-300).
3. Phase linguistics
- At the age of 2-6 years or more, at this stage he began to study grammar and vocabulary development of 3000 units.

B. Bzoch divide the stages of language development of children from birth to age 3 years in four stages, namely:

   1. 1. Infant language development as a communication prelinguistik

Occurs at age 0-3 months from birth until the end of the period of the first year. The newborn has not been able to combine elements of both language content, form, and language usage. In addition to undeveloped conventional forms of language, cognitive abilities of infants are also underdeveloped. Communication is more reflective than planned. This period is called prelinguistik. Although infants do not understand and can not reveal the form of conventional language, they observe and produce sound in a unique way.

Clinician must determine whether the baby observe or react to sound. If not, this is an indication for a physical evaluation and audiology. Furthermore, interventions are planned to build an environment that provides many opportunities to observe and react to sound.

2.      The word - the first word: the transition to children's language

Occurs at age 3-9 months. One of the major milestones of language development is the pronunciation of the first words that occurred at the end of the first year, continues until one and a half years when growth is rapid vocabulary, also marks the start of early sentence formation. The development of cognitive ability, presence control, and emotional interpretation in this period will give meaning to the child's first words.

Meaning the first words they can refer to objects, people, places, and events surrounding the child's early environment.
3. The development of rapid vocabulary initial sentence-formation.

Occurred at the age of 9-18 months. Form the first words a lot and the start of sentence production. Comprehensive development and production of words took place rapidly at around the age of 18 months. Children start to combine nouns with verbs which then produces syntax. Through its interaction with adults, children begin to learn to consolidate content, form, and use of language in conversation. With the growing cognitive and affective experiences, the child begins to speak using the words stored in its memory. There was a shift from the use of one-word sentence into a noun and a verb.
4. From conversations baby into the registration pre-school child-like adults.

Occurs at age 18-36 months. Children with mobility began to increase access to wider social networks and cognitive development becomes more deeply. Children begin to think conceptually, categorize objects, people and events as well as to solve physical problems. Children continue to develop the use of adult phoneme

Language development in children can be seen also from language acquisition according to its components, namely:

   1. 1. The development of pragmatic

Communication development of children actually had started early, first of all of her crying when the baby feel uncomfortable, such as hunger, wet diaper. From here the baby will learn that he will get the attention of his mother or someone else when she was crying, so then the baby will cry when asking adults to do something for him.
-At the age of 3 weeks, the baby smiles when there is stimulation from outside, eg a person's face, eyes, voice, and tingling. This is called a social smile.

-At the age of 12 weeks, starting with simple dialogue pattern of response when her mother's voice responded.

-At the age of 2 months, babies begin to respond to call his mother communication.

-At the age of 5 months, babies begin to imitate the movement of people, study the form of facial expressions. -At the age of 6 months, infants became interested in the objects of communication so that communication becomes a mother, baby, and objects.

-At the age of 7-12 months, children point to something to express her wishes. These movements will grow along with certain sounds that start consistently. At this time until about 18 months, the role of gestures is more prominent with the use of one syllable. -At the age of 2 years, then entered the stage of a child capable of stringing a sentence syntax with two words, reacting to the couple talked on and in a short dialogue. Children begin to introduce or change the topic and started to learn to maintain flow of conversation and catch the listener's perception. Facilitative maternal behavior that will help children in introducing new topics.

-By age 3 years, children begin to dialogue much longer up to several times a turn. After this age, children begin to be able to maintain the topic later began making a new topic. Nearly 50 percent of children 5 years to maintain a topic over 12 times a turn. Around 36 months, an increase in the liveliness of speech and children gain social awareness in the conversation.

Speech addressed to the couple speak into clear, well-organized and well adapted to the listener. Most of the couples communicate children are adults, usually parents. When children begin to build a social network that involved people outside the family, they will modify the self-understanding and self image and become more aware of the social standard. Linguistic environment has a significant influence on the process of language learning. Mother holding control in building and maintaining the correct dialogue. This lasted throughout the pre-school age. Children are in mono phase of dialogue, conversation alone with the willingness to involve other people. Monologues are rich in songs, sounds, words meaningless, fantasy and verbal expression of feeling.

   1. 5. Development of Phonology

The development of phonology through a long process of decoding language. Most of the construction of the morphology of children will depend on its ability to receive and produce units of phonology. During preschool age, children not only receive the inventory of phonetic and phonological system but also develop the ability to determine which sounds are used to distinguish meaning. Phonological acquisition related to the construction process syllables consisting of a combination of vowels and consonants. Even in babbling, the child using the consonant-vowel (CV) or consonant-vowel-consonant (KVK). Other processes associated with assimilation and substitution to the perception and production of sound.

According to Clark and Clark (1977:397), some characteristics of simplification in child language are: 1)omission of final segments, 2)reduction of consonant clusters, 3)omission of unstressed syllables and 4)reduplication of syllables.

Table 1. Omission of Final Sounds

age	Speech produced	Intended words	English translation
2;2	è	es	Ice
2;3	Pau	Paus	Whale
2;5	Obi	Mobil	Car
2;7	B ca	Besar	Big

            On the table above, we know that the Indonesian child produced a word by omitting the final sound. E.g. b_ca means besar. They omit the final sound of ‘r’.

Table 2. Reduction of consonant clusters

age	Speech produced	Intended words	English translation
2;2	ëpat-ëpat	lompat-lompat	Jump
2;6	p_gi	Pergi	Go
2;7	Gapu	garpu	Fork
2;10	Tigi	tinggi	High
3	Abut	rambut	Hair
3;2	Cati	cantik	beautiful

On the example above, the children produce a word consisting of two or more syllables with reducing the consonant which is in the middle of a word. For instance, gapu means garpu. The sound ‘r’ in the middle of word is reduced.

           

Table 3. Omission of unstressed syllables

age	Speech produced	Intended words	English translation
2;6	Këla	sekolah	school
2;7	Dili	sendiri	By himself
2;9	Kala	sekarang	now

            The example of the third characteristic is pronunciation of Këla which is from sekolah. The stressing of this word is in se’kolah. They omit the unstressed syllable se and directly pronounce ‘kola.

Table 4. Reduplication of Syllables

age	Speech produced	Intended words	English translation
2	Nonat	donat	Doughnut
2;5	Piti-piti	kepiting	Crap
2;6	Guk-guk	anjing	dog
2;11	tenginga	Telinga	Ear

            From the examples above, we can analyze that the children at 2 to 3-year old sometimes use reduplication to produce a word. It happens because the children may have difficulty to produce the whole word and they use reduplication to make it more simple.

1.      Children using English often reduce  or eliminated the second consonant such dress becomes dess, clown becomes cown play becomes pay. It is called consonant cluster reduction.

2.      Assimilation process of course when sounds in the child production are assimilated to neigbouring sound in the same word or other unit thus the affected sound has a phonetic relation not only to the model sound but also to relevant other sound that occur near it.For example : if a child says ( guck for duck the initial alveolar d is being assimilated to the velar k ).

3.      Voicing and Devoicing : Occur when consonant tend to be voiced when preceding a vowel and devoiced at the end of syllable. For example : an English says [ daini ] for tiny [ tini ], [ ek ] for egg [egg ], and [ das ] for toes [ taus ].

4.      Many children will make errors in producing such fricatives as [f, v, s, z, h] replacing them with corresponding stop [p,b,t,d,k,g ]. For example : children say [ti] for sing and [they ] for say.

5.      Vellar ( k,g,n ) and palatal consonant ( c,j) tend to be replaced by alveolar ones ( t,d,s,z,l,n,r). for example : children pronounces ( dut ) for goat, [tal for call].

6.      English child pronounces leg as beg and ready as wedi ( gliding ).

7.      Engilsh child will be best representative for example : he says ( apo ) for apple and ( babu ) for bottle.

8.      English children change vowel into oral and often centralized vowel. For example : back is pronounced ( bat )