Phonological Development
Phonology is the study of the sound system of a language and phonological development concerns your child’s acquisition of motor control in the speech organs to produce sounds. As adults, we take for granted the complexity of making sounds and articulating utterances. We simply open our mouth, fire up our voice box and words come out. In fact, we require a huge array of speech organs to speak as we do now, including:
-Lungs
-Larynx
-Velum
-Tongue
-Hard Palate
-Alveolar
-Teeth
-Lips
-Nose
Infants must first develop control over all these necessary vocal organs before they make their first words and be able to master the correct Places and Manners of Articulation for each consonant sound and the right Tongue Position and Lip Shape for each vowel. *Note: vowels are sounds where the airflow is relatively unobstructed, while consonants are all other sounds other than vowels
Place of articulation is a means of categorising consonant sounds in terms of where the tongue needs to be and which organs need to be employed in order to produce the sound. There are 8 places of articulation in total:
Bilabial –using both lips (b in banana, m in moon)
Labio-Dental – using lower lip and upper teeth (f in food, v in river)
Dental – using the tongue tip and the teeth (th in those, th in teeth)
Alveolar – using the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge (tw in two, n in nut, z in zoo)
Palato-Alveolar – using the blade of the tongue and the back of the of the alveolar ridge (sh in shell, sh in shoe)
Palatal – using the front of the tongue and the hard palate (y in yes, y in you)
Velar – using the back of the tongue and the velum (c in come, ng in sing)
Glottal – using the space between the nasal folds (h in hairy, wh in whole)
Manner of articulation is another method of categorising consonants, this time with respect to the degree of airflow. obstruction. There are 6 manners of articulations:
Stop - complete closure of the oral cavity with the velum raised (p-, b- ,t- )
Nasal – complete closure of the oral cavity velum lowered (m-, n, -ng)
Fricative – partially blocked airflow with the sound created by the turbulence (f-, v-, s-)
Affricate – a stop and a fricative combined; actually two sounds (there are only 2: j- , ch-)
Lateral – the tongue pressing against the alveolar ridge obstructs the airflow (only one: l-)
Approximant- speech organs come close together but not enough to create turbulence (y-, w-, r-)
Tongue Position, as the name suggests,describes a vowel sound in terms of the position of the tongue in the oral cavity. A vowel can be low or high, front or back.
Another means of describing vowels is by its Lip Shape. This refers to the roundness of the lips when the vowel is uttered. A vowel can be rounded (food, on) or unrounded (tea, action).
During your child’s phonological development, it is helpful to learn the different Places and Manners of Articulation as well the Lip Shape and Tongue Position of sounds to indentify and address the difficulties you child may have at producing certain sounds. For example, if your child interchanges ‘s’with ‘th’, it may mean that your child has
not gained enough motor control over his/her tongue to distinguish betweenthe different Places of Articulation.
-Lungs
-Larynx
-Velum
-Tongue
-Hard Palate
-Alveolar
-Teeth
-Lips
-Nose
Infants must first develop control over all these necessary vocal organs before they make their first words and be able to master the correct Places and Manners of Articulation for each consonant sound and the right Tongue Position and Lip Shape for each vowel. *Note: vowels are sounds where the airflow is relatively unobstructed, while consonants are all other sounds other than vowels
Place of articulation is a means of categorising consonant sounds in terms of where the tongue needs to be and which organs need to be employed in order to produce the sound. There are 8 places of articulation in total:
Bilabial –using both lips (b in banana, m in moon)
Labio-Dental – using lower lip and upper teeth (f in food, v in river)
Dental – using the tongue tip and the teeth (th in those, th in teeth)
Alveolar – using the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge (tw in two, n in nut, z in zoo)
Palato-Alveolar – using the blade of the tongue and the back of the of the alveolar ridge (sh in shell, sh in shoe)
Palatal – using the front of the tongue and the hard palate (y in yes, y in you)
Velar – using the back of the tongue and the velum (c in come, ng in sing)
Glottal – using the space between the nasal folds (h in hairy, wh in whole)
Manner of articulation is another method of categorising consonants, this time with respect to the degree of airflow. obstruction. There are 6 manners of articulations:
Stop - complete closure of the oral cavity with the velum raised (p-, b- ,t- )
Nasal – complete closure of the oral cavity velum lowered (m-, n, -ng)
Fricative – partially blocked airflow with the sound created by the turbulence (f-, v-, s-)
Affricate – a stop and a fricative combined; actually two sounds (there are only 2: j- , ch-)
Lateral – the tongue pressing against the alveolar ridge obstructs the airflow (only one: l-)
Approximant- speech organs come close together but not enough to create turbulence (y-, w-, r-)
Tongue Position, as the name suggests,describes a vowel sound in terms of the position of the tongue in the oral cavity. A vowel can be low or high, front or back.
Another means of describing vowels is by its Lip Shape. This refers to the roundness of the lips when the vowel is uttered. A vowel can be rounded (food, on) or unrounded (tea, action).
During your child’s phonological development, it is helpful to learn the different Places and Manners of Articulation as well the Lip Shape and Tongue Position of sounds to indentify and address the difficulties you child may have at producing certain sounds. For example, if your child interchanges ‘s’with ‘th’, it may mean that your child has
not gained enough motor control over his/her tongue to distinguish betweenthe different Places of Articulation.