Investigating the speech production errors in children: are there substitutions or intruding gestures?

• Grant number: 14/01381-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Larissa Cristina Berti
• Grantee: Larissa Cristina Berti
• Host Investigator: Tim Bressmann
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Toronto (U of T), Canada

Abstract

Within the approach of Gestural Phonology (henceforth GP) the minimal units of phonological structure are understood to be the articulatory gestures. Since gestures are understood to be basic units of speech production, it is expected to see them participate individually in speech production errors in children with phonological disorders instead of phonological segment (such as phonemes). The current study, using ultrasound data, will investigate if (or to the extent that) speech production errors (perceived by listeners as segmental substitutions) in children with phonological disorders involved the concomitant production of intrusive and target gestures. Should both gestures be present, we will also quantify the different magnitudes of these gestures as well as the temporal locations they occur. There will be at least 18 children participating in this study, 9 children with phonological disorders and 9 children age-matched controls. The production stimuli experiment will consist of the randomized repetition of familiar penultimate stress disyllabic words beginning with /t/,/k/, /s/ and /ƒ/ in /a/ stressed context. Acoustic and ultrasound articulatory measurements will be used. We expect to contribute to understanding the interaction between linguistic structure and motor control of the articulators in language acquisition and furthermore provide new insights into the speech production process. (AU)