Added syllable complexity in a child’s developmental speech and clinical implications

ABSTRACT

Added syllable complexity, whereby a non-targeted consonant is added next to a targeted consonant in the syllable, has received relatively little attention in studies of children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and typically developing children. Despite the scarcity and subtlety of the pattern, evidence in child and adult data indicates universality. The present article examines the pattern in a bilingual child’s longitudinal speech in English from age 2;7 to 4;0, focusing on word-initial consonant addition. The purpose is to identify phonological and psycholinguistic processes associated with the pattern. It is suggested that the complexity pattern with both legal and illegal outputs is a systemic developmental behaviour linked to the child’s level of phonological acquisition, facilitating acquisition of the complex CCV rule as well as of non-acquired singleton consonants. Implications of the results for children’s SSD intervention techniques and for adult degenerative speech are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Child speech
• consonant epenthesis
• development
• speech sound disorders
• syllable complexity

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that improved the article. The Bilingual Phonology Lab at the University of Arizona, under the direction of Leah Fabiano Smith, carried out inter-rater reliability tests on the data. Their contribution is also gratefully acknowledged. Preliminary findings on the topic were presented at ICPLA 2012 in Cork, Ireland.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest.