2 research outputs found
A study of phonological development in a primary school population of East London
A review of work on children's language shows that the development
of language in young children is best viewed in terms of an
increasing differentiation of functions, until the basic linguistic
competence is established at a relatively early age - usually
within the child's fourth year. After this age development
proceeds in the mastery of the finer stylistic features which
are contained in a child's group-language.
A study of the speech of 9-year old children shows a high degree
of uniformity in phonological detail. 9-year old speech is taken
as the terminal model for the developing speech of younger
children in this investigation. Within the 9-year old group there
are found to be phonological features which differentiate the
speech of boys and of girls.
The speech of younger children is found to differ in certain
characteristic ways from the mature model. Traces of earlier
modes of speech are relatively persistent among children up to
4½ years of age.
Development between 5 and 8 years consists in the acquisition of
features of the local dialect, features of connected speech and,
in the later stages, features of speech of the child's sex-group.
The early-acquired competence is filtered through an increasing number of phonological transformations to produce,
finally, a mature performance. The mature phonemic system is acquired at an early stage, although articulation nay not be
completely mature until after 7 years.
A test of speech-sound discrimination produces results in favour
of older children. This may be due in part to maturation of
linguistic ability, and in part to the fact that older children
are more sensitive to each other's speech than younger ones