Child's Speech Transcript Analysis

Introduction

This research is intended to analyze the transcript of a child’s speech. The target child is a female named Majorie who is 2 years and 3 months old. The transcript is from The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. The linguistic aspects that will be examined are the phonological processes of the child including speech errors, syllable shapes, and her phonetic inventory consisting of manner and place of articulation. Included in the analysis will be her stage and development of lexical knowledge and what words she uses.

Phonological Processes

The child seems to conform to the normal development that other children her age demonstrate. According to Carol Stoel-Gammon (1987), 24 month olds should be able to make a /b/ sound in the initial position just as the child does in utterance 6 (p.327). She can also make an /n/ sound in the final position. See utterance 39.

6 here in bed .

39 you change mine okay ?

An error she does make, however, is stopping. She takes what would normally be fricatives and she turns them into stops. For example,

2 da [: the] baby sad and da [: the] baby crying .

69 dza [: the] boy crying .

She shows signs of chain shifts also. In the examples above, she trades the fricative “th” in “the” for a stop like “da”. Other times, the child correctly pronounces “the”.

29 where are the dog ?

62 I close door with the boy .

The child exhibits an error called final consonant deletion. Instead of fully enunciating the whole word to the end, she drops the last consonant. This is seen in utterance 1 and 72.

1 I want a pen an a book

72 a circle a Oma an(d) Opa.

The “d” in both of the bolded words is missing. She has difficulties with the “d” in t...

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...es like consonant harmony can change the word to make it incomprehensible.

The CVC syllable shape was the most common for her. That shape is general in many English nouns. The syllables do not get complex and long, but she is still young and learning.

Her phonetic inventory is well developed. She has no troubles creating the age-appropriate speech sounds. The child is just above normal because she can produce more adult-like sounds than her peers. She has control over her articulators and she knows how to manipulate her oral cavity to produce the correct sounds.

The child’s lexical inventory is well developed. She has no troubles with finding words to express her thoughts. Not many words are repeated and that illustrates that she has a vast vocabulary to where she does not have to borrow words. She does not over or under extend the usage of her words.