South African English Speech Development: Preliminary Data from Typically Developing Preschool Children in Cape Town.

South African English Speech Development: Preliminary Data from Typically Developing Preschool Children in Cape Town. Clin Linguist Phon. 2018 Aug 21;:1-17 Authors: Pascoe M, Mahura O, Le Roux J Abstract English is one of eleven official languages in South Africa, but there is limited information on children's acquisition of English and other languages in this context. This paper describes speech development in 308 children aged 3;0-5;11 acquiring South African English in Cape Town. The study focused on English speech acquisition, although children were grouped by language background into monolingual, isiXhosa bilingual, Afrikaans bilingual and trilingual groups. The primary objective was to describe phonetic and phonological acquisition (percentage consonants and vowels correct (PCC and PVC); phonetic inventory and phonological processes) by children's age and language background. As a secondary objective we described the prevalence of speech disorders in the sample using Dodd's (2005) framework. The Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology was used to assess participants with modified scoring criteria appropriate for the context. Phonological processes and inventories were broadly comparable to normative data for English speech acquisition documented in the literature, and a progression was observed with increasing age. PCC and PVC were similar for children within age bands despite different language backgrounds. Bilingu...
Source: Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Clin Linguist Phon Source Type: research