/t/ before /ʈ/ or /ʈ/ before /t/: Emerging Trends from a Preliminary Study of Consonant Acquisition in Typically developing Sinhala-speaking Children aged 3 to 6 years

Shyamani Hettiarachchi , Mahishi Ranaweera , R.M.W. Rajapaksha
Share:
Articles
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47985/dcidj.456
Submitted: 2021-01-02 08:10:45
Published: 2021-10-26

Purpose: Speech and language therapists use developmental norms established for consonant acquisition to determine whether a child has age-appropriate, delayed or disordered speech skills. There are currently no established norms for the acquisition of Sinhala consonants, which have implications for accurate diagnosis. The aim of this study was to document preliminary trends observed in the trajectory of consonant sound development in Sinhala-speaking young children so as to form a set of ‘working norms’.

Method: A picture-based articulation assessment was administered to 70 typically developing children who were between 3 years and 6 years 11 months of age.

Results: Regarding the rate of acquisition and order of acquisition, the findings displayed trends comparable to general patterns of consonant mastery reported within cross-linguistic studies. In addition, a different rate of acquisition and order of mastery was observed for both uncommon Sinhala language-specific speech sounds showing ambient language effects and for a few common sounds occurring in Sinhala and other languages.

Conclusion & Implications: The convergence and divergence in the rate and order of Sinhala consonant acquisition compared to the cross-linguistic literature has important clinical implications for assessment, early identification of speech difficulties and intervention within speech and language therapy practice in Sri Lanka.

Keywords

Speech consonants trajectory acquisition norms Sinhala

Authors

Shyamani Hettiarachchi
Shyamani works as a Speech and Language Therapist and Dramatherapist in Sri Lanka. She is currently working at the Department of Disability Studies at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya as a Senior Lecturer, where she teaches the Speech and Hearing Sciences course.
Mahishi Ranaweera
Mahishi works as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Language Teaching of the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She is currently reading for her Ph.D. at University College London.
R.M.W. Rajapaksha
The author was Senior and Chair Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. He specialises in research on phonetics and phonology.

How to Cite

Shyamani Hettiarachchi, Mahishi Ranaweera, R.M.W. Rajapaksha (2021-10-26). /t/ before /ʈ/ or /ʈ/ before /t/: Emerging Trends from a Preliminary Study of Consonant Acquisition in Typically developing Sinhala-speaking Children aged 3 to 6 years. Disability, CBR & Inclusive Development, Vol. 32 No. 3 (2021): Autumn 2021, 9-28. https://doi.org/10.47985/dcidj.456

Download Citation

License

Copyright © 2021 The Author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

View License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution License By-NC-ND 4.0  that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See  The Effect of Open Access ).

Similar Articles

51-60 of 61

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.

Most read articles by the same author(s)