Phonological assessment and analysis tools for Tagalog: Preliminary development

ABSTRACT

Information and assessment tools concerning Tagalog phonological development are minimally available. The current study thus sets out to develop elicitation and analysis tools for Tagalog. A picture elicitation task was designed with a warm-up, screener and two extension lists, one with more complex and one with simpler words. A nonlinear phonological analysis form was adapted from English (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 2000) to capture key characteristics of Tagalog. The tools were piloted on a primarily Tagalog-speaking 4-year-old boy living in a Canadian-English-speaking environment. The data provided initial guidance for revision of the elicitation tool (available at phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca). The analysis provides preliminary observations about possible expectations for primarily Tagalog-speaking 4-year-olds in English-speaking environments: Lack of mastery for tap/trill ‘r’, and minor mismatches for vowels, /l/, /h/ and word stress. Further research is required in order to develop the tool into a norm-referenced instrument for Tagalog in both monolingual and multilingual environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• phonetics
• phonology
• Tagalog

Acknowledgments

We thank Jennifer Soriano, Ivan Bondoc and Dr. Jocelyn Marzan from the University of the Philippines Manila Speech Pathology Department and Dr. Teresita Ramos from the University of Hawaii for their endless input towards our understanding of Tagalog phonology. We also appreciate the input of Jenea Peralejo and Marilou Carrillo regarding Tagalog-speaking children in Vancouver. A special thanks to Stefka Marinova-Todd from the University of British Columbia for serving on the Master of Science thesis committee. And finally, we thank the child and his family for their participation.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca

² /h/ can also be considered [–consonantal] (= no constriction above the larynx). Consonantal speech sounds are defined as having oral or pharyngeal constriction above the larynx.

³ The assessment tools are available from the authors free of charge through the website phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca. In addition, there are tutorials on phonology, phonetics, nonlinear phonological analysis for goal-setting and examples of therapy activities.

⁴ For counts relative to each of the word lists, contact the authors. Examples of counts include, but not limited to the following: number of words with one-, two- or more syllables; number of words that have a specific phoneme word initially, medially and finally; number of words with each stress pattern; and number of words with each word shape.

⁵ The authors can be contacted for a copy of the transcription conventions for Tagalog.

⁶ The adult pronunciations in all lists show phonetic variants with {}. Space precludes placing [] around the entire item.