The effect of dialect on the phonological analysis of Chinese-influenced Malaysian English speaking children

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of dialect on phonological analyses in Chinese-influenced Malaysian English (ChME) speaking children. A total of 264 typically-developing ChME speaking children aged 3–7 years participated in this cross-sectional study. A single word naming task consisting of 195 words was used to elicit speech from the children. The samples obtained were transcribed phonetically and analysed descriptively and statistically. Phonological analyses were completed for speech sound accuracy, age of consonant acquisition, percentage of phonological process occurrence, and age of suppression for phonological processes. All these measurements differed based on whether or not ChME dialectal features were considered correct, with children gaining higher scores when ChME dialect features were considered correct. The findings of the present study provide guidelines for Malaysian speech-language pathologists and stress the need to appropriately consider ChME dialectal features in the phonological analysis of ChME speaking children. They also highlight the issues in accurate differential diagnosis of speech impairment for speech-language pathologists working with children from any linguistically diverse background.

Keywords::

• Speech acquisition
• phonology
• typical development

Acknowledgements

The material presented here is part of the first author's PhD which was completed at the University of Canterbury under the supervision of the third author. The first author would like to thank the University of Canterbury for an International Doctoral Scholarship that enabled her to undertake the work. The authors are also grateful to the teachers, children, and parents who were willing to participate in this study. The authors also would like to thank Professor Michael Robb for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.