Phonology

1. Phonology EdL 750 Language Acquisition November 12, 2010 Kristine Lize Colleen Pennell Jane Radaj

3. What is phonology? “Phonology is the study of the sound system of language; the rules that govern pronunciation.” (Parker & Riley, 2010, p.99) /d//u/ /k/ /s/ /d/ /k/ /s/ /u/ /j/ /e/ /t/ (Moats, 2010)

4. Speech vs. Phonics vs. Phonology • Talking and hearing • Physical phenomena • Use vocal tract to produce speech sounds • Phonological units and rules are described in terms of the physical properties of the vocal mechanism. Parker & Riley, 2010

5. Speech vs. Phonics vs. Phonology Vowels • Tongue height • Tongue frontness • Lip rounding • Vocal musculature Parker & Riley, 2010

6. Speech vs. Phonics vs. Phonology Consonants • Place of articulation • lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords • Manner of articulation • e.g., nasal • Voicing Parker & Riley, 2010

7. Speech vs. Phonics vs. Phonology • the letter - sound correspondence as it involves print t – a – p is pronounced /t/ /a/ /p/ tap

8. Speech vs. Phonics vs. Phonology • Phonology refers to how we perceive segments that correspond to speech sounds. • Psychological phenomena Parker & Riley, 2010 Phoneme • smallest segment of spoken language that cues meaningful difference between words Troia, 2004

9. What is phonological awareness? • the ability to identify, think about, and mentally manipulate the parts of words syllable trum – pet onset and rime m – an phoneme /z/ /i/ /p/ • rhyming, alliteration, blending, segmenting

10. The Phonological Model • A hypothesis stating the root of learning disabilities is a phonological deficit • Weak phonological skills in kindergarten result in difficult attainment of the alphabetic principle • Alphabetic Principle

11. Necessary But Not Sufficient • Top Five Predictive Kindergarten Measures: • Letter Identification • Concepts about Print • Phonological Awareness • Expressive Vocabulary • Sentence/Story Recall Out of 16 predictive measures only 5 are phonological in nature. (Scarborough, 1990)

12. So, why are we here? • Understanding phonological processing is critical • Phonology matters from preschool through high school. (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009) • Impacts decoding • Impacts spelling • Impacts individual pronunciations • Assists in understanding reading disability Scarborough, 1990

13. What does it mean to say that a child has phonological processing competence? productive receptive

14. What does it mean to say that a child has phonological processing competence? Receptive Phonological Skills • Phoneme • Syllable • Onset and rime • Word – recognize familiar words • Prosody – rate, rhythmic patterns, pitch, intonation (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

15. What does it mean to say that a child has phonological processing competence? Productive Phonological Skills • Produce all phonemes in native language (45) • Combine phonemes into syllables, onsets, rimes, and words • Create multiword expression with prosodic features characteristic of native language (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

16. What does it mean to say that a child has phonological processing competence? Problems • Nonstandard pronunciations and nonstandard prosody • Nature and quality of phonological representations • Able to decompose words into smaller units during reading • Consciously reflect on sound segments and matches (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

17. Why should teachers care about whether children acquire phonological processing competence? • Children with reading disabilities share the same core deficit • Children need a strong vocabulary to develop their literacy (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

18. How does receptive phonological processing competence change over time? Colleen Birth to 4 months: • Babies can recognize their mother’s voice • At birth - recognize unique features of their native language including common tones and expressions of their language. • Babies actually prefer their native language over other languages. • newborns begin to discriminate consonants (pa/ba) 5 to 8 months: • discriminate complex sounds (/a/ in hat vs /au/ in taught. • By eight months can detect individual words spoken streams • Preference for words they have heard (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

19. How does receptive phonological processing competence change over time? Colleen 9 to 12 months • prefer to listen to nonsense words with sounds that have the same properties of their native language • at 12 months receptive phonological skills are similar (but not entirely the same) as that of adults

20. How does receptive phonological processing competence change over time? Ages 13 months and older: • Receptive skills become global to specific: • Age 5 or 6: Receptive skills mostly complete. • Children with receptive deficit need phonological training • Phonological Awareness measures

21. How does productive phonological processing competence change over time? Birth to 12 months: Five Stages (Stark) • Reflexive crying/vegetative sounds • Cooing and laughter (6-18 weeks) • Vocal Play (4-6 months) • Canonical Babbling (7-9 months) ma ma • Nonreduplicative Babbling “magadoopee” (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

22. How does productive phonological processing competence change over time? Colleen • By age 3: express almost all of the vowel sounds • Between age 3-7 – some sounds more difficult. Substitutions common • Age 7: Most children have achieved necessary productive and receptive phonological skills

23. What factors promote changes in phonological processing competence? Biological Experiential

24. Nature vs. Nurture • YouTube - Phonology lesson • 2 years later...

25. What factors promote changes in phonological processing competence? Biological • Same trends found in many cultures • Brain – significant changes between birth and 5 • Brain – wired to hear distinctions in sounds and to create sound categories • Innately guided learning (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

26. What factors promote changes in phonological processing competence? Experiential • Master phonological aspects of language in stages • Children’s utterances provide feedback stimuli to analyze. • Adult responses to utterances encourage children. • Greater vocabulary - easier to segment sounds (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

27. What factors promote changes in phonological competence? Motivational • Human communication is goal-orientated • Humans engage in four processes when they want to solve a problem: • Set a goal • Devise and evaluate ways to accomplish the goal • Chose and implement the best plan • Observe the effects (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

28. What factors promote changes in phonological competence? Motivation/Problem-solving + Development of phonological processing skills (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

29. Are there populations of children or adults who lack some or all of the key skills of phonological processing? • Children who enter first grade without phonological processing skills will most likely struggle when they begin to learn to read. • Deaf children • Students with LLI (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

30. Instructional Implications: Preschool Years (3-5) • Young children’s phonological profile can be inconsistent (Scarborough, 2005 ) • Literacy achievement improves when children learn how to manipulate speech sounds (Troia, 2004)

31. Instructional Implications: Primary • Pronunciation is tied to the ability to accurately decode (Byrnes & Wasik, 2009)

32. Instructional Implications: Intermediate and Secondary • Decoding and word recognition deficits can present after third grade • Phonology heavily studied in the primary grades; current researchers argue to expand its role to middle and secondary levels (Scarborough, 2005 )

33. English Language Learners & Phonology • Much phonological research is conducted with English-speaking students • Literacy acquisition varies across countries (Seymour, 2009)

34. References Byrnes, J.P. & Wasik, B.A. (2009). Language and literacy development: What educators need to know. New York: The Guildford Press. Moats, L. C. (2010). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers (2nd ed. ). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing. Parker, F., & Riley, K. (2010). Linguistics for non-linguists (5th ed. ). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Scarborough, H. S. (2005). Developmental relationships between language and reading: Reconciling a beautiful hypothesis with some ugly facts. In H. W. Catts, & A. G. Kamhi, (Eds.), The connections between language and reading disabilities (pp. 3-24). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Seymour, P. H. (2009). Early reading development in European Orthographies. In M.J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.) The Science of Reading, A Handbook (pp. 296-315). Troia, G. A. (2004). Phonological processing and its influence on literacy learning. In C. A. Stone, E. R. Silliman, B. J. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of language & literacy: Development and disorders (pp. 271-301). New York: The Guilford Press.